
Class 

Book i. 

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ELIJAH KELLOGG 

THE MAN AND HIS WORK 




Elijah Kellogg at Sixty-five. 

1878. 



ELIJAH KELLOGG 



THE MAN AND HIS WORK 



CHAPTERS FROM HIS LIFE AND SELECTIONS 
FROM HIS WRITINGS 



EDITED BY 

WILMOT BROOKINGS MITCHELL 

PROFESSOR OF RHETORIC AND ORATORY 
BOWDOIN COLLEGE 




BOSTON 

LEE AND SHEPARD 

1903 



'1 



*y* 






Copyright, 1903, by Leb and Shepard. 

Published, November, 1903. 



All Eights Reserved. 



Elijah Kellogg. 



NovtoooU 19res3 

J. 8. Cushing & Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. 

Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 



^o 



&0 

FRANK GILMAN KELLOGG 

AND 

MARY CATHERINE BATCHELDER 

THIS SCANTY RECORD 
OF THE 

LIFE AND WORK OF THEIR BELOVED FATHER 

IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED 



PREFACE 

This book makes no pretence of expound- 
ing the doctrines of the theologian or analyz- 
ing the methods of the artist. It is simply 
a remembrancer of a quaint and winning man 
for his intimate friends and parishioners ; for 
the boys who have delighted in his stories ; 
for the sailors whose lives he saved from ship- 
wreck ; for the college students who learned 
from him a wisdom not to be found in books ; 
for all, in fact, to whom the memory of his 
unique personality is dear. With the story 
of his life, with anecdote and reminiscence, 
with selections from his speeches, sermons, 
letters, and journal, it aims to recall Elijah 
Kellogg as he really was : the boy, tingling 
with life and full of fun to his finger tips; 
the college student, genial, prankish, and 
zealous ; the farmer-preacher, devout and re- 
sourceful, making pen and book, scythe and 
hoe, seine and boat, all his ready servants to 
do God's work ; the author, finding his way 

vii 



vili PREFACE 

straight to the heart of the growing boy ; the 
aged man, fond as ever of the soil and the 
sea, and after all the rubs and chances of a 
long life, still young in spirit, strong in faith, 
and free from bitterness and guile. 

Acknowledgment is here due to Mr. Kel- 
logg's son and daughter, Mr. Frank G. Kellogg 
and Mrs. Mary C. Batchelder, and to many of 
his intimate acquaintances in Harpswell and 
Brunswick for information relating to his 
early Harpswell life. Special acknowledg- 
ment is also due to President William DeWitt 
Hyde for valuable advice concerning the prep- 
aration of this book. 

W. B. M. 

Bkunswick, Maine, 
November 23, 1903. 



CONTENTS 

BIOGRAPHICAL CHAPTERS 

PAGE 

The Boy 1 

Rev. George Lewis, D.D., Pastor of Congregational 
Church, South Berwick, Maine. 

College and Seminary 27 

Henry Leland Chapman, D.D., Professor of English Lit- 
erature, Bowdoin College. 

Early Harpswell Days 50 

Wilmot Brookings Mitchell, Professor of Rhetoric and 
Oratory, Bowdoin College. 

The Seaman's Friend 74 

George Kimhall, Dorchester, Mass. 

As Seen through a Boy's Eyes .... 94 
Judge William Oliver Clough, Nashua, N.H. 

Kellogg the Author 115 

Wilmot Brookings Mitchell. 

Last Days in Harpswell 141 

As Seen in Letters and Journal. 

Reminiscences . . 169 

General Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, LL.D., Ex-Gov- 
ernor of Maine and Ex-President of Bowdoin College. 

A Tribute 190 

Rev. Abiel Holmes Wright, A.M., formerly Pastor of 
St. Lawrence Street Church, Portland, Maine. 
ix 



X CONTENTS 

SELECTIONS FROM WRITINGS 

PAGE 

Declamations : 

Spartacus to the Gladiators . . . . 205 

Regulus to the Carthaginians .... 211 

Hannibal at the Altar . 217 

Pericles to the People 225 

Icilius . . J 229 

Decius . . . 236 

Leonidas 241 

The Centurion 248 

Virginius to the Roman Army .... 254 

General Gage and the Boston Boys . . . 259 

The Wrecked Pirate . . . . . . 265 

Speeches : 

" An Ounce of Prevention " . . . . . 271 

Delivered in Boston in 1861. 

Religious Worship Early in the Century . . 276 

Delivered at Portland, Maine, Centennial Celebration, 
July 4, 1886. 

At Bowdoin Commencement, June 25, 1890 . . 287 

At Centennial Celebration of Bowdoin College, 
June 28, 1894 297 

Love . . . 306 

Delivered at "Donation Party" at Harps well, Sep- 
tember 18, 1894. 

The Deluded Hermit 310 

Delivered at " Donation Party," October 1, 1895. 

Home 314 

Delivered at " Donation Party," October 19, 1897. 



CONTENTS xi 

PAGE 

Sermons : 

The Prodigal's Return ...... 321 

Wresting the Scriptures ...... 338 

The Beauty of the Autumn 357 

To Bowdoin Students, October, 1889. 

The Anchor of Hope 361 

Preached at the Second Parish Church, Portland, 
August 5, 1900, " Old Home Week." 

A Prayer . . .367 

Memorial Day, 1883, Brunswick. 

Verse : 

From " The Phantoms of the Mind " . 373 

The Demon of the Sea 374 

Portland 378 

An Ode 379 

Written for the Semi-centennial Celebration at Bow- 
doin College, August 31, 1852. 

A Hymn . . 381 

Written for the Celebration of the Twenty-eighth 
Anniversary of the Boston Seaman's Friend So- 
ciety, May 28, 1856. 

True Poetry's Task 382 

Miscellaneous : 

Memories of Longfellow 387 

Ben Bolt 391 

Ma'am Price 404 

The Discontented Brook 413 

Complete List of Books 423 



XIV ILLUSTRATIONS 

v FACING PAGE 

Eleanor Batchelder. Daughter and granddaughter 

of Elijah Kellogg . . . . . . .202' 

Elijah Kellogg at 77. 1890 288 

Elijah Kellogg at 80. 1893 306 

Interior View of Elijah Kellogg's Church at Harps- 
well, Maine 356 

Elijah Kellogg at 86. 1899 384 



ELIJAH KELLOGG: THE BOY 

George Lewis 

It is much easier to read the boy after you 
see and know the man than it is to read the 
man when you see and know only the boy. 
Manhood may be the unfolding of the various 
forces and dispositions of boyhood, but this 
unfolding must take place before the boyhood 
itself can be comprehended. The mill must 
grind the wheat into flour and the flour be 
baked and eaten before we can know how 
good the kernels of wheat are. So we must 
see Elijah Kellogg as a man before we can 
fairly estimate him as a lad. When we hear 
him preach or when we read some of his books, 
then we know there was something in him 
when a child more than mere roguery and fun. 
Genius was there. Powers and faculties were 
there which, when trained by judgment and 
directed by piety, made him the preacher to 
whom men and women loved to listen, and 

1 



Z ELIJAH KELLOGG 

the writer of books that captivated the hearts 
of all boys. 

This man first saw the light May 20, 1813, 
in a house on Congress Street in Portland, 
Maine, where dwelt the pastor of the Second 
Congregational Church of the city. The baby 
was called Elijah because that was the father's 
name ; and the father at his birth had been 
called Elijah because of the famous prophet 
in Israel who bore the name. At the father's 
birth it was said by his parents, " We must 
have a prophet in the family." So the name 
Elijah was given to the boy and he proved 
a prophet not in name only, but in reality 
as well. The Rev. Elijah Kellogg, pastor of 
the Second Congregational parish in Port- 
land during the latter part of the eighteenth 
and early part of the nineteenth centuries, 
was no mean representative of the old Hebrew 
prophet. The famous name sat well and ap- 
propriately upon the younger man. Had the 
Rev. Mr. Kellogg lived in the days of Ahab, 
of infamous memory, we may be very sure 
he would have stood beside the old prophet 
in his stout resistance to that wicked king; 
and had the Hebrew prophet been born in 
New England in the eighteenth century he 



ELIJAH KELLOGG : THE BOY 3 

would have sympathized warmly with his 
young namesake as he buckled on his belt 
and beat the drum for the patriots at the 
battle of Bunker Hill, and put forth all his 
skill and strength to free the colonies from 
the selfish and tyrannical rule of George III. 
There never yet was a true prophet of God 
in any land whose heart did not beat warmly 
for larger popular liberty and for a higher 
type of righteousness. Every prophet looks 
toward a sunrising that shall bring to earth 
a better day. 

Elijah Kellogg, Sr.,was but a boy at the open- 
ing of our Revolutionary struggle, but he was a 
boy of high spirit, of dauntless courage, and 
of most generous impulses. He derived these 
qualities of character from two distinct sources. 
These sources were, first, his ancestry, and sec- 
ond, the neighborhood where he was born, viz., 
South Hadley, Massachusetts. A boy could 
hardly be born and reared in the atmosphere of 
Hampshire County, Massachusetts, especially 
around Northampton and the Hadleys at that 
period of time, and be anything other than a 
freedom-loving patriot. It was a region of coun- 
try favorable to the growth of heroes. Settled 
by stanch and sturdy Puritans, its people had 



4 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

for many years been sternly disciplined by the 
Indian troubles. No pusillanimous and faint- 
hearted men could by any means live long 
in that section. Only men of courage and 
strength could abide there. The Kelloggs 
proved what stuff they were made of, for the 
family had been living there for more than 
a century when Elijah came upon the scene. 
They were there when the regicide judges, 
Whalley and Goffe, pursued by the rancorous 
hatred of Charles II., sought an asylum in 
New England. Those men came first to New 
Haven for shelter, but even there they were 
not safe from the emissaries of the king. The 
protection, however, that New Haven could 
not afford them, Hadley could. Among the 
steel-hearted men of that up-river country they 
found safety. In that region was an associa- 
tion of liberty-loving souls, which, better than 
woods and better than caves, made life safe 
for those men who had helped behead a faith- 
less king and had thereby given the cause of 
political and religious freedom a great uplift. 
Some towns are vastly better for boys to be 
born in than other towns are. South Hadley 
was one of the " better towns," where Elijah 
Kellogg, Sr., saw the light for the first time 
in the year 1761. 



ELIJAH KELLOGG : THE BOY 5 

Furthermore, there was good blood in the 
Kellogg veins irrespective of their geography. 
They were a worthy race anywhere and in all 
circumstances. Among the ancestors of this 
prophet-named lad were men who had borne 
the banner of the cross in Palestine with Rich- 
ard of the Lion Heart, and others who had been 
true and stanch men in the Wars of the Roses 
and during the great reigns of Henry VIII. 
and Queen Elizabeth, and still others there 
were who a little later for their conscience' 
sake had come to America. With such an 
ancestry as that and with a birthplace like 
South Hadley, it is no wonder that we find 
young Kellogg at Bunker Hill, where were 
fired the opening guns of the Revolution ; or 
that a little later he endured the privations 
of Valley Forge and fought at Monmouth. 
He was, however, formed for scholarship 
rather than for military life, and after the 
war he entered and graduated at Dartmouth 
College. In 1788 the Second Church of Port- 
land gave him a call to their pastorate. He 
accepted the call, and after this time Port- 
land was his home as long as he lived. 

Elijah Kellogg, Jr., had a good deal come 
to him from his father's side of the house. 



6 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

He also had a good deal come to him from his 
mother's side. This mother of his had once 
been Eunice McLellan. Her father was Captain 
Joseph McLellan and her mother was Mary, 
daughter of Hugh and Elizabeth McLellan, 
who had been among the earliest settlers of 
Gorham, Maine. Eunice, therefore (Mrs. Kel- 
logg), was a McLellan of the McLellans. The 
family were Scotch-Irish people, and were de- 
scended from old Sir Hugh, who was knighted 
in the year 1515, and the race was one of 
strong family characteristics. Even at the 
present time they are somewhat clannish, and 
to this day throughout New England the name 
McLellan is regarded by him who bears it as 
a sort of patent of nobility ; and all agree that 
there are few if any names in the country 
more worthy of respect and honor than that 
one. 

Joseph McLellan was a born sailor if ever 
there was one, an adventurous rover of the 
seas, always happiest when on blue water 
with a good ship under his feet and a stiff 
breeze blowing him along his course. This 
man sent his own disposition down the family 
stream, and gave to his grandson Elijah a 
generous share of that same roving and ad- 



ELIJAH KELLOGG: THE BOY 7 

venturous spirit. The story is told that on 
the birth of an infant daughter to Joseph and 
Mary the parents decided to call her Esther, 
or as it was pronounced in those days, Easter. 
The babe was taken to the church that she 
might be baptized at the hands of the Rev. 
Mr. Deane. At the font the name of the 
child was handed to the clergyman, Easter, 
upon which he broke out, " Easter ! Easter ! 
That is no good name for a girl. Call her 
after my wife. Call her Eunice. Eunice, I 
baptize thee," etc. The deed was done, and 
the child was Eunice in spite of both father 
and mother. The baby thus curiously named 
became in due time the wife of Parson Kellogg 
and the mother of the subject of this sketch. 
The McLellans were a canny folk. They had 
fought for Scottish liberty in many a sharp 
tug with the Saxons in the old days. They 
had helped fight the battles of the Cov- 
enanters at a later period, and now in the 
eighteenth century, transferred to America, 
they still kept up the fight and played their 
part on many a field, from Bunker Hill to 
Yorktown. 

Blood will tell. Family traits will be trans- 
mitted. Sons will in some degree resemble 



3 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

sires. With an ancestry on both sides like 
that sketched above, it is no great wonder that 
the subject of this volume became the man he 
did. He had a good start. There was in him 
a goodly fund of inherited gifts. In the book, 
"Good Old Times," which is Mr. Kellogg's 
story of the McLellan family (his grand- 
mother's branch of it more particularly), the 
author lets us see how largely his own personal 
character was formed and his whole life influ- 
enced by the traditions and stories of the men 
and women of the family, recounted as those 
stories were at the fireside in the winter even- 
ings, and told over again in the daytime as 
men and boys were doing their work in the 
woods and in the fields. The boy was per- 
fectly happy when listening to these tales of 
pioneer life, made up as they largely were of 
homely and commonplace incidents and yet 
of really adventurous deeds. They were tales 
of conflict with the Indians, in which the 
McLellan fairness and good sense always won 
the respect of the savages and in most cases 
secured their good will and good treatment ; 
of encounters with bears and wolves and other 
wild beasts, where man's craft and skill gained 
the victory; and experiences with cold and 




Rev. Elijah Kellogg. 1796. 

Father of Elijah Kellogg. 

From a miniature. 



ELIJAH KELLOGG : THE BOT 9 

hunger and hardships of the wilderness, in 
which Christian faith and the McLellan pluck 
overcame all odds and achieved a good measure 
of prosperity. Things like these were the 
folk-lore of the Gorham people rather than 
stories of round tables and fairies and ghosts 
and witches. This boy, like Carlyle, came to 
have a great admiration for the "man who 
could do things." The ideal hero of Elijah 
Kellogg's early boyhood was the hearty, warm- 
hearted, rough-handed, whole-souled pioneer 
who never turned his back upon a foe, whether 
biped or quadruped, and who never blenched 
in the face of a difficulty or a danger. He 
was the man who had in himself resources 
that were always called out and brought into 
exercise when obstacles were encountered, and 
invariably rose superior to the obstacles and 
made the man complete master of the situation, 
however bad that situation appeared. As he 
would have phrased it, he liked the man who 
never got whipped. The white man who 
could outwit an Indian or outhug a bear or 
outrun a pack of wolves was a man to be 
admired. The man who could fell a forest 
and clear a farm and put the soil to the pro- 
duction of corn and wheat was a man to be 



10 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

admired. This hero of Kellogg's childhood 
was never entirely dethroned from the heart 
of the man. To the end of his days he loved 
that man who, using his own native strength, 
could bridle and ride the storm, or over the 
rudest billows of the ocean could bring his 
vessel into port. 

It is almost superfluous to say that the man 
who wrote such books for boys as are the Elm 
Island and the Pleasant Cove series of stories 
was himself, when a lad, what would be called 
to-day an irrepressible. Without the least 
spice of malice or any suggestion of real harm 
in his nature, Elijah Kellogg was as full of 
mischief as a spring is of water, and it was sim- 
ply impossible for parents and guardians to 
keep him within the bounds of Puritan pro- 
priety. It weighed not one jot with him that 
grave ministers and dignified elders of the 
church were among his forbears. It never 
occurred to him that because his father was 
a clergyman therefore he, the boy, should not 
go with other boys on Sunday morning to 
enjoy a frolic and take a swim in the waters 
of Back Cove, well out of sight from the par- 
sonage windows, though of course such things 
on the Lord's Day were strictly forbidden. 



ELIJAH KELLOGG: THE BOY 11 

Elijah's proclivities were well known, and 
many were the family traps that were set for 
his ensnarement. But he had great facility 
for getting out of scrapes as well as getting 
into them. He did not, however, always escape 
detection. On one occasion, for example, the 
Sunday morning swim and games had been too 
fascinating for his boyish discretion, and had 
held him at the water until the public services 
for the morning at the church had closed. 
Elijah went home to meet his father, who had 
missed the boy from his proper seat in the 
family pew. That meeting between father 
and son can be more easily imagined than 
described, especially if the reader happens to 
be the child of a stern Puritan church-goer, 
and has himself been guilty of escapades on 
Sunday. To the question, " Where have you 
been this morning?" the boy replied without 
hesitation that he had been to the Methodist 
meeting. He heard his father preach every 
Sunday, and he had become a little tired of 
hearing one voice, and he wanted to hear what 
some other man had to say. Of course the 
next question was, " What was the preacher's 
text ? " Elijah was ready for this and at once 
gave chapter and verse and repeated the pas- 



12 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

sage. But the inquisition did not stop here; 
he must now give some account of the sermon. 
This seemed a perfectly easy matter to the 
young culprit. He had heard a good many 
sermons, and he felt very sure that he could 
report one even though he had not listened 
to it at all. But here he was caught. He 
had never heard anything but the rigid, old- 
school, Calvinistic doctrines, and it never 
entered his head that one minister did not 
always preach like another. It was therefore 
a sound Calvinistic sermon that this young 
reporter put into the mouth of the Methodist 
minister. He was soon brought up short with 
the paternal remark: " Elijah, stop right there. 
Now I know you are lying. No Methodist 
minister ever preached like that. Your whole 
story is false. You have spent your morning 
down by the water." 

When Elijah was some ten or eleven years 
old he was taken to Gorham, and spent some 
months in the home of Mrs. Lothrop Lewis. 
Mrs. Lewis had a young daughter whom she 
wished put into a Portland school, and an ex- 
change of children was made with the Kelloggs, 
they taking the girl into their home and Mrs. 
Lewis taking the boy into hers. This exchange 



ELIJAH KELLOGG: THE BOY 13 

was in many respects a grateful one to the boy. 
The country was the place for him. There 
was more freedom there, more room and more 
chance for fun than in town. Perhaps, too, 
the fact that his father was nine miles away 
had its alleviations, for the presence of a 
father, however dearly he was loved, was a 
damper on the spirit of prankishness. While 
with Mrs. Lewis, Elijah certainly made mis- 
chief for everybody, but at the same time he 
made friends of everybody, for none could help 
loving the bright and lively fellow. In due 
time the boy went back to Portland. But the 
city was no place for a lad like him. He 
chafed under its restraints, and cared but little 
for its schools. He was like a sea-gull shut 
up in a cage. As the imprisoned gull pines 
for the freedom of wind and wave so did the 
heart of Elijah Kellogg long for the free winds 
and the rolling waters and the ships that went 
sailing away to distant ports. It was a long- 
ing that could not be suppressed, and no one 
can really blame him that before he was thir- 
teen years old he had found his way on board 
a ship and become a sailor in downright ear- 
nest. I am sure that the boys who read his 
books are not sorry that the hand that wrote 



14 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

those stories gained some of its cunning by 
pulling ropes, furling and unfurling sails, tak- 
ing his trick at the wheel, and sharing actively 
in whatever pertained to the handling and 
management of vessels. He loved the sea, and 
was fascinated by the strange sights and sounds 
of foreign countries. He was a keen observer 
for a boy just entering his teens, and he gained 
much valuable knowledge as he wandered 
round the world borne along by the wings of 
a ship. But in his roving he never for one 
moment forgot his home. His heart was warm 
and true to the friends who were there. Let- 
ters written to his father from different quar- 
ters of the world are now in existence, and they 
bear full testimony to his ardent affection for 
home and friends. His love for friends was 
perhaps the strongest element of his nature, 
even stronger than his love of adventure, and 
in due time that love brought him back from 
his travels no longer to sail the seas except in 
small boats near the shore. In the story of 
"Charlie Bell," Mr. Kellogg (unconsciously, 
no doubt) has given us the picture of a boy's 
nature and disposition very much like his own. 
After returning from sea Elijah found Port- 
land and Portland ways no more congenial to 



ELIJAH KELLOGG : THE BOY 15 

him than they had been before he went away, 
and again he left home and went to Gorham 
to try life among his McLellan relatives. He 
lived for a time in the family of Major Warren 
on a farm some two miles out of the village, 
matching his own strength of muscle with that 
of the regular farm-hands. He was not there 
a great while, however. Rev. Mr. Kellogg 
came out from Portland and interviewed Mr. 
Alexander McLellan, a near relative of his own 
wife, and the result of that interview was that 
Elijah was, after the fashion of the time, in- 
dentured as an apprentice to Mr. McLellan to 
do general work on the place for the period of 
one year. The purpose of this indenture, how- 
ever, was rather to restrain and hold him in 
one stated place than to make a servant of 
him, for he became at once a true member of 
the family " in good and regular standing." 
He took his position and did his share of the 
work on the place in a faithful and orderly 
manner. His experience on the ship had been 
of great benefit to him. He had there learned 
the lessons of obedience and of industry, — les- 
sons absolutely essential for every boy to learn 
if he would ever arrive at a worthy maturity. 
Now, instead of blocks and ropes and belaying 



16 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

pins, his tools were the plough, the hoe, the 
scythe, and the axe, and while using these he 
could almost fancy himself a pioneer. All this 
was a very wholesome kind of life and a right 
life in its way. Still it was no proper life for 
such a young man as by this time Elijah Kel- 
logg had become. All his friends seemed to 
feel the incongruity of it, and the truth of this 
began to dawn upon himself, also. He began 
to feel, and to feel very strongly, that this sort 
of life was not up to his own level. The bird 
is for a life higher than the ground, and in like 
manner he was for something higher than the 
farm. There was a real genius in the soul of 
this boy that was reaching up toward intellec- 
tual exercises. Decks of ships, fields of corn, 
loads of lumber, were all good, but for him 
there was something better. The play of in- 
tellect appealed to him now more than the play 
of muscle did. All the associations in the 
family where he lived and those throughout 
the village were such as to encourage and fos- 
ter this new ambition. This new feeling, this 
new ideal which was fast taking possession of 
his mind, was only an indication that the doors 
of boyhood were closing and the doors of man- 
hood were beginning to open. He was grad- 



ELIJAH KELLOGG: THE BOY 17 

ually coming to understand himself and to have 
a dawning perception of some God-given pow- 
ers, which, if they were properly trained, might 
result in the accomplishment of fine things. 
This vision of what he might sometime per- 
form, if he would, rose to the front, and for 
the time assumed the leadership of his life. 
He was as obedient to this vision as Saint Paul 
was obedient to the vision he had near the 
city of Damascus, or as Abraham Lincoln was 
obedient to those dreams and visions that he 
had while he was managing the natboat on 
the great river. The McLellan family, where 
he was living, were heartily in sympathy with 
this new development. From oldest to young- 
est they all felt that it was not a proper thing 
that this young man who was so gifted and 
who showed so many marks of a true genius 
should spend his energies on the farm and in 
the shop. There is iron for the place of iron 
and steel for the place of steel and silver for 
that of silver. This was a piece of silver, and 
he ought to take his proper place. It is need- 
less to say how much this change of aim on 
the part of Elijah gladdened the heart of his 
own father. It was indeed a day of general 
thanksgiving when this young man put him- 



18 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

self in the way of a higher intellectual devel- 
opment and entered Gorham Academy as one 
of its students. This was one of the best 
academies in the country at that day. Its 
presiding genius was Master Nason who was 
known far and wide, not only as one who 
could keep rude boys in subjection to school 
rules by a liberal use of the birch, but as one 
who possessed faculty and power to stir the 
minds of pupils and impart to them rich stores 
of knowledge. New England has seen few 
instructors equal to Master Nason. The names 
of boys whom, in the old Academy at Gorham, 
he fitted for college, have in several instances 
become known all over the country, and some 
are known round the world. The Academy is 
proud of its roll of graduates, and those who 
studied under Mr. Nason have always been 
proud of their teacher. 

Young Kellogg now put himself squarely 
down to hard work. He was older than are 
most boys when they take up the higher 
branches of study and begin to point their 
way definitely toward college, and he studied 
and worked in the Academy like one who is 
trying to make up for lost time. Such an 
intensity of application to books as was his 



ELIJAH KELLOGG: THE BOY 19 

at this time would have broken down many 
students ; but Kellogg had a rare stock of good 
health and physical strength. He could well 
stand the strain of hard study. He had a well- 
knit frame. He never forgot how much of 
his own power of endurance he derived from 
his sturdy habits of toil in field and forest. 
He never forgot what a good physical basis 
for intellectual work manual labor gives one. 
In one of the college boys of his creation in 
the Whispering Pine series of books — Henry 
Morton — he shows the close connection be- 
tween that young man's hoe and axe and his 
leadership of the college class. When Mr. 
Kellogg did this, he knew very well what he 
was talking about. Seventy years ago these 
things largely took the place of the athletic 
field of our time, and they filled that place 
very well, too. An old fogy may perhaps be 
pardoned for saying that in spite of all the 
excitement and glory of base-ball and foot-ball 
and running and leaping and boating, still the 
oil of hoe handle has its virtues as a medicine 
for students. 

The life of young Kellogg shows distinctly 
two points of turning. The first one was when 
he wakened to the consciousness of his mental 



20 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

powers ; when he realized something of what 
he was and determined that he would live on 
the high level of his intellectual self. A young 
horse that has in him the elements of speed to 
win a race on the track is trained for the track. 
The horse of great weight is put into the truck 
team. Animals are put in training, according 
to what they are. When Kellogg realized 
something of his own intellectual power, then 
he put himself in training for an intellectual 
life. He therefore went into the Academy 
that he might fit for college. After he had 
begun work in the Academy there came to him 
another consideration, and he asked the ques- 
tion : " Is a life of mere scholarship the highest 
and best one of which I am capable ? He felt 
surely that he ought to live up to the level 
of his mind, but he began to feel that there 
was some power in himself superior to that 
of brains and that that higher power should 
be developed and his own life should be de- 
voted to that which was supreme. He felt 
strongly that he should not allow the spiritual 
element of his nature to lie dormant or go to 
waste. The diamond that is not ground on 
the wheel is just as hard as the one that is 
ground, but it does not sparkle and flash like 



ELIJAH KELLOGG: THE BOY 21 

the one on which the lapidary has spent his 
skill. The uncut diamond is like the man 
who stops in the classical school and does not 
care for the infinitely finer work that religion 
does for him. Mr. Kellogg felt that it was 
not enough for him to have power. The power 
that was in him should be dedicated to the di- 
vinest ends. It should be religiously dedicated 
and consecrated. This was the second turn- 
ing of his life, and when it was made he had 
become an earnest and devoted Christian. He 
understood Christianity to mean that he should 
employ the faculties and powers of his own 
nature in helping other people to lead better 
and more wholesome lives. Christianity meant 
more than self -culture ; it meant self -giving. 
If there was in himself (as there certainly was) 
a large element of fun, this was by no means 
to be suppressed or sent into eclipse. Religion 
would not maim him that way any more than 
religion would clip the wings of a robin and 
make a mole of the bird. But religion would 
take that spirit of fun and cause it to play 
and shine and work for the production of purer 
thinking and cleaner living and higher aiming 
among all young people. 

It was in obedience to this new spirit that 



22 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

Elijah went to work at once outside of the 
Academy as well as in it, and he then started 
some streams of religious influence that have 
by no means ceased running even to this day. 
Among the things he did at this period was 
to go into a certain neighborhood not many 
miles from Gorham and start a Sunday-school. 
It seems easy enough to say that the young 
man went into a certain place and organized 
a Sunday-school, but from all accounts it was 
by no means an easy or even a safe thing for 
that young man to do. Three score and odd 
years ago — long before the days of Neal Dow 
and the Maine Law — there were certain 
regions here and there in the State where 
those people who were ignorant and given to 
drink and other forms of vice were sure to 
congregate like birds of ill omen, and there 
would be a neighborhood from which respect- 
able people would keep away. Such a com- 
munity was a multiplied Ishmael whose hand 
was against every man and every man's hand 
against it. On one of these disreputable dis- 
tricts Elijah's attention became fixed. With 
two or three of the people who lived there he 
had in some way become acquainted, and he 
" felt a call " to preach in that place. But 



ELIJAH KELLOGG: THE BOY 23 

even Elijah Kellogg, young, brave, and stout- 
hearted as he was, shrank from going there 
alone with an invitation to a Sunday-school 
to be sent abroad among that class of folk. 
He feared what might come from such a move- 
ment, and wished for a companion to share 
his fortunes. He appealed to a young friend, 
George L. Prentiss, afterward for many years 
an honored professor in Union Theological 
Seminary in New York, to go with him. But 
the response of Prentiss to this request was 
not favorable. "No, Elijah," was his word, 
" I don't dare to go down there. They will 
kill us if we do." Then after a moment's 
pause, " I'll tell you what I will do. If you 
go down there and start a Sunday-school and 
don't get killed, I'll come in later and help 
you." But Elijah had set his heart on doing 
the bit of work, and was not to be scared out 
of it. He started on his mission alone, and I 
doubt if Judson on his way to India, or Liv- 
ingstone going to Africa, did a more heroic 
thing than that. He did start a Sunday-school, 
and he did get the people interested in both 
himself and his school, and through his influ- 
ence the community was transformed, and to- 
day the descendants of those people are an 



24 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

intelligent, God-fearing, church-going, high- 
minded class of citizens, and they are such be- 
cause of Mr. Kellogg. He never forgot them, 
and they never forgot him. The writer of 
this article was present in company with Mr. 
Kellogg at the fiftieth anniversary of the in- 
auguration of that school. The season was 
mid-summer. The day was Sunday. The 
place was the church. The audience was every- 
body who lived in the district, supplemented 
by a large number who had driven thither from 
Portland, Westbrook, Gorhara, Scarboro, and 
Saco. The larger share of those who had 
gathered were not able to get inside the church, 
but they crowded as close to the wide open 
windows as possible and heard what they could. 
After brief introductory exercises, Mr. Kellogg 
preached a most beautiful and touching sermon 
of some twenty minutes' length. Then the 
Bible was closed, and a period of story-telling 
began. There were present some four or five 
persons who remembered the "first day of 
school " fifty years before. They all talked. 
Reminiscences were called up, old scenes re- 
vived, old stories told, old experiences related, 
and the old time was contrasted with the new. 
It was all of it immensely funny. Sometimes it 



ELIJAH KELLOGG: THE BOY 25 

was crying, but a good deal more it was laugh- 
ing. My own feeling at the moment was that 
it was fortunate the windows were open, for 
otherwise the house must have burst. I do 
not think there ever was another church than 
that since churches were built where was heard 
so much laughter and manifested so much fun 
and wit on Sunday. 

Mr. Kellogg got through with the Academy, 
and entered Bowdoin College in 1836. It is 
worthy of note that in all his long life he 
never shuffled off the boy. It was not a mere 
memory on his part that he once was a boy. 
The genuine boy was never a memory with 
him, but was always a present reality. In one 
sense he was as young at eighty as he was at 
eighteen. Boys were his mates always. There 
are men who, like Oliver Wendell Holmes, never 
grow old, and Mr. Kellogg was one of them. 
To the very last his lips would smile and his 
eyes would twinkle as he recalled some prank 
of his boyhood or told tales of those who had 
been his companions on the ship and on the 
farm and in the school. He never forgot a 
friend, and he certainly never forgot a funny 
or laughable incident. His own perennial boy- 
hood has cheered and made more noble an 



26 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

almost numberless band of young lives through- 
out the country, and may the time be long 
before the young people of the land shall cease 
to read his wholesome books. 



COLLEGE AND SEMINARY 

Henry Leland Chapman 

It was in 1836, in the twenty-fourth year of 
his age, that Elijah Kellogg entered Bowdoin 
College as a Freshman. His father had been 
one of the earliest and firmest friends of the 
college. As one of the Cumberland County 
Association of Ministers he had joined in the 
petition to the General Court of Massachusetts 
for the establishment of a collegiate institu- 
tion in the province of Maine. When in an- 
swer to the petition of the ministers, and of 
the Court of Sessions of Cumberland County, 
the college was incorporated in 1794, Mr. 
Kellogg was named as one of the first board 
of overseers. Four years later he became a 
trustee, and continued to hold that official 
relation to the college until 1824. During 
his boyhood, therefore, and before he cherished 
any purpose or desire to enjoy its privileges, 
Elijah must have heard, within the family cir- 

27 



28 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

cle, much about the college which was so great 
an object of interest and pride to his father, 
as it was, indeed, to the whole community. 
It was but natural, therefore, when his pur- 
pose was seriously formed to seek a college 
training in preparation for his father's calling 
of the ministry, that Bowdoin, aside from its 
proximity to his home, should be the college 
of his choice. But his course collegeward was 
interrupted and delayed by various circum- 
stances, and particularly by personal tastes 
that were quite other than scholastic. Always 
a lover of the sea, and delighting in the tales 
of sea life and adventure to which he listened 
from the lips of sailors themselves along the 
Portland wharves, it is not strange that the 
call of the sea sounded louder than any other 
in his ears. So, listening to the call, he shipped 
before the mast, and for three years lived 
the hard and perilous life of a sailor. It is 
true that the experience, which may have been 
useful to him in other ways also, was an ad- 
mirable preparation for the brilliant service 
which he afterwards performed as chaplain 
of the Sailor's Home in Boston, but in the 
meantime it made him late in entering upon 
his college life. It is to be said, however, 




Mrs. Eunice McClellan Kellogg. 
Mother of Elijah Kellogg. 



COLLEGE AND SEMINARY 29 

that of his thirty classmates six were as old 
as himself. 

We must look to certain volumes of the 
Whispering Pines series, and particularly to 
the volumes entitled " The Spark of Genius," 
" The Sophomores of Radcliffe," and " The 
Whispering Pine," for a picture of his college 
life, true in its general features, and graphic 
like everything from Mr. Kellogg's pen. These 
books, which have been read with eager inter- 
est by so many generations of boys, describe 
Bowdoin College, its professors, students, cus- 
toms, and manners as they were known to Eli- 
jah Kellogg during the years of his residence 
there from 1836 to 1840. If they seem to be 
devoted largely to a recital of pranks and mis- 
chief and practical jokes among the students, 
it is partly because such things made a stronger 
appeal to scheming brains, and youthful fellow- 
ship, and leisure hours in those days, before ath- 
letic sports enlisted, as they have since enlisted, 
the restless energy and high spirits and intense 
rivalry of college boys ; and partly, also, it was 
because his native sense of humor and love of 
fun, his spirit of adventure and personal cour- 
age, constituted an ever present temptation to 
him to share or lead in enterprises which de- 



30 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

manded wariness and cunning and pluck, and 
which promised the discomfiture of some boast- 
ful and unloved fellow-student, or the per- 
plexed disapproval of the college authorities, 
or the entertainment of a college community 
always keenly appreciative of a diverting 
sensation. So alive was he to this phase of 
student activity, and so conspicuous was he 
among his mates for resourcefulness and cour- 
age, that he became, in the popular opinion 
of his time and in subsequent tradition, the 
hero of many an escapade with which he had 
no connection. One instance, however, of 
strenuous effort quite outside his college du- 
ties seems to be well authenticated, and will 
serve to show the kind of mischievous exploit 
which was attractive enough to enlist his co- 
operation. 

The president of the college during the first 
three years of Kellogg' s course was a man of 
great dignity and reserve. He held himself 
quite aloof from the students, neither inviting 
nor allowing any freedom of social intercourse. 
Partly on this account he was unpopular with 
the student body, and the solemn reserve in 
which he intrenched himself seemed, in their 
eyes, to make any infringement, however 



COLLEGE AND SEMINABY 31 

slight, of his personal dignity particularly hu- 
morous. There was much irreverent laughter, 
therefore, when it was whispered about on one 
occasion that the silk hat which the president 
was accustomed to wear, and which seemed 
the very crown and symbol of his formal state- 
liness, had been stolen, and was in the hands 
of some of the students. When it came to 
the ears of Kellogg he remarked that if he 
knew the boys that had the hat he would put 
it on the top of the chapel spire. Of course 
the interesting information was not long with- 
held from him, and in the darkness of a show- 
ery night he climbed sturdily up by the slender 
and insecure pathway of the lightning-rod, 
and placed the hat on the very top, where, in 
the morning, it met the dismayed vision of 
the president, and received the boisterous salu- 
tations of the college. That was Kellogg's 
contribution to the deed of mischief. To 
steal the hat was a petty and foolish trick, 
such as might be perpetrated by a half-witted 
person, a coward, or a thief ; but to carry it 
through the darkness to the top of the chapel 
spire required a clear head, a stout heart, good 
muscle, and nerve, and these Elijah Kellogg 
possessed, both in youth and manhood. 



32 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

In reading these books, which tell the sub- 
stantial history of his life at Bowdoin, it is 
quite evident that, with all the interest he 
took in the pastimes and pranks of his associ- 
ates, he was not unmindful of the high and 
serious purpose of a college course. He main- 
tained a consistent ideal of personal integrity 
and helpfulness and truth. It is the repeated 
testimony of those who were in college with 
him that his influence upon his fellow-students 
was in a high degree stimulating and whole- 
some. " He was," says one who knew him 
well in the intimacy of college association, 
" universally popular, but he had his own 
chosen favorites, and one characteristic of 
him was his strong personal affection for them. 
His soul burned with love to those whom he 
loved. This was one secret of his power for 
good, for his influence upon them was always 
good." An unaffected scorn of what was mean 
or false, and an eagerness to recognize and to 
make the most of every good and generous 
trait in his companions, were as characteristic 
of him as was his light-hearted, fun-loving dis- 
position, and it is easy to see why he won 
both the respect and love of those who were 
admitted to his friendship. 



COLLEGE AND SEMINARY 33 

These engaging qualities of his youth were 
no less those of his age, and they made him 
throughout life the friend of boys and the 
favorite of boys. He never lost the spirit of 
sympathy and comradeship with young men, 
and as his home, during the later years of 
his life, was not far from the college that he 
loved, he had a double motive to revisit, from 
time to time, the scene of those labors and 
frolics and friendships which he had so charm- 
ingly depicted in the Whispering Pine books. 
Accordingly he presented himself, now and 
then, either unexpectedly or upon invitation, 
at the door of some undergraduate member of 
his college fraternity, the Alpha Delta Phi, 
and became, for as long as he would stay, a 
welcome and honored guest. 

It did not take long for the news to spread 
that Elijah Kellogg was in college ; and then 
the hospitable room would be visited by many 
callers, eager to greet the shy, weather-beaten 
little man, whose heart was always warm for 
boys, and even the mazy wrinkles of whose 
face seemed to speak less of age than of kind- 
ness. And by the evening lamp an interested 
circle of students forgot the morrow's lessons 
as they listened to stories of olden time, and to 



34 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

quaint words of counsel and comment as they 
fell from the visitor's lips. When the circle 
finally dissolved, and Mr. Kellogg and his 
entertainers were left alone, a psalm, which 
seemed somehow to gain new meaning from 
his reading of it, and a simple earnest prayer, 
brought the long evening to a fitting and 
memorable close. 

It is interesting, moreover, to notice, as an 
evidence of the profound regard and affection 
which the Bowdoin students felt for Mr. 
Kellogg, that when, in 1901, they published 
a volume of Bowdoin tales, no other dedica- 
tion of the book was thought of than the one 
which inscribes it to the memory of Elijah 
Kellogg, " who celebrated his Alma Mater 
in story, honored her by practical piety, and 
won the hearts of her boys, his brethren." If 
he was not eminent in the prescribed studies 
of the college, neither was he neglectful of 
them, nor unfaithful to them. Perhaps his 
enjoyment of college fellowships and his love 
of fun interfered to some extent with his de- 
votion to the classics and mathematics, which 
made up a large part of the curriculum, and, 
in addition, the necessity under which he lay 
of providing for his own expenses must have 



COLLEGE AND SEMINARY 35 

diverted a part of his energies from study to 
manual toil. But whether at work, at play, 
or at study, he was hearty and resourceful. 
An incident, as told by himself, illustrates 
this trait of his character, and, incidentally, 
introduces the president whose sombre dignity 
provoked the stealing and subsequent disposal 
of his hat, as already related. 

" I had to work my way through college," 
said Mr. Kellogg, "and I boarded with a 
woman named Susan Dunning. I came to 
her house one Saturday. There was a deep 
snow on the ground, and college was to open 
Monday. She was feeling very blue because 
her well-sweep had broken. I told her not to 
mind, I'd fix it. The snow was too deep to 
get the cattle out, so I took a sled, and going 
to a wood-lot cut a big, heavy pole, it took 
a big one, too, for an old well-sweep. I put it 
on the sled, and tried to haul it back ; but the 
long end dragging in the deep snow made 
that impossible. So, instead of hauling it, I 
took hold of the end and started pushing it 
home. It was hard work, but to make it 
worse President Allen met me and remarked, 
' Well, Kellogg, I have heard of putting the 
cart before the horse, but I never saw it done 



36 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

before;' then he burst into a hearty laugh, 
and that's the only time I ever saw him even 
smile in all the years I knew him." 

Besides President Allen, who was a man of 
learning and piety, as well as soberness, and 
whose single laugh, as chronicled by Mr. 
Kellogg, may perhaps be extenuated on the 
ground that it was indulged in before the 
term began, it was a notable group of men 
under whose influence and instruction Mr. 
Kellogg came during his residence at Bow- 
doin. There was Professor Alpheus S. Pack- 
ard, whose elegant culture and kindly heart 
and beautiful face relieved the tedium of the 
Greek class-room, and impressed themselves 
upon the grateful memories of not less than 
sixty classes of Bowdoin students. There 
was Professor Thomas C. Upham, the quaint 
and shy philosopher, who had in himself so 
much of the mystic and seer combined with 
the patient metaphysical analyst that it sent 
him from time to time into bursts of re- 
ligious song, and assured his name an hon- 
ored place among the hymn- writers as well as 
among the philosophers. There was Professor 
Samuel P. Newman, who, by precept and 
criticism, imparted as much as can be imparted 



COLLEGE AND SEMINARY 37 

of the art of rhetoric, in which Mr. Kellogg 
was to become so much of a proficient. There 
was Professor William Smyth, rugged, impetu- 
ous, and true, an apostle of abolition, an 
enthusiastic champion of popular education 
and, indeed, of every good cause, and, above 
all, a profound and famous mathematician, 
about whom Mr. Kellogg relates the some- 
what apocryphal story of the " Mathematician 
in Shafts," not, as may be seen, to suggest 
ridicule, but in a sort of fond and amused 
recognition of his unique and vigorous per- 
sonality. And finally, not to make the 
catalogue too long, there was Professor Parker 
Cleaveland, the distinguished scholar and 
teacher of chemistry and mineralogy, and a 
man of idiosyncrasies as striking as were his 
gifts. In a beautiful memorial sonnet Long- 
fellow said of him : — 

" Among the many lives that I have known 
None I remember more serene and sweet, 
More rounded in itself, and more complete." 

" From Seniors to Freshmen," says Mr. Kel- 
logg, " all believed in, loved, and were proud of 
the reputation of the scholarly, kind-hearted, 
democratic, and, at times, compassionate 



38 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

professor." And at the close of the chapter 
which is devoted to illustrations of Professor 
Cleaveland's eccentric ways and beneficent 
influence, Mr. Kellogg is moved to this ear- 
nest and affectionate expression of his rever- 
ence : " Blessings on thy memory, faithful 
one, — faithful even unto death, — to whom 
was committed the gift to stir young hearts 
to noble enterprise and manly effort; who 
knew how to train the youthful eye to look 
upon, and the heart to pant after, the goal 
thou hadst reached ! Those most amused 
with thy peculiarities loved thee best. From 
hence removed to the presence and enjoyment 
of Him whose wisdom, power, and goodness, 
manifested in the material world, thou to us 
didst so worthily explain and illustrate, we 
shall behold thy form and press thy hand no 
more ; but only with life shall we surrender 
the memory of him who united the attributes 
of both teacher and friend." 

It is impossible that under the personal in- 
fluence of these teachers, and of their instruc- 
tion, young Kellogg, with his frank and 
susceptible nature, should not have been 
stimulated to intellectual effort, and to moral 
earnestness, and that he should not have 



COLLEGE AND SEMINABY 39 

retained in subsequent life some impress from 
their vigorous and scholarly and noble char- 
acters. How much he owed them in the 
direction and the development of his powers 
we may not say. It is never possible to 
measure, or to estimate exactly, the total 
influence of a teacher's life and work upon 
his pupils. It acts often in ways that do 
not disclose themselves to our perception ; it 
touches the young men at points and moments 
of which we do not know the responsive or 
the repelling significance ; it often produces 
effects which are the very opposite of what we 
should predict; it falls into the ground and 
dies, as it were, and years afterward springs 
up and bears fruit in a form so changed that 
we do not recognize the seed in the resulting 
harvest; it is often hidden in the hearts of the 
young men, and works by way of impulse or 
restraint so subtly that they themselves are 
not conscious of it ; and so we can never tell 
to what extent a young man's character has 
been formed or modified by the influence of 
his teachers. But there is certainly some 
indication of Mr. Kellogg's own estimate 
of what he owed to college instruction and 
stimulus in the ardent and unwavering affec- 



40 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

tion which he always exhibited for his Alma 
Mater, and which was abundantly reciprocated 
in the reverent honor accorded to him by the 
college, and by all its students and alumni. 
At the one-hundredth anniversary of the col- 
lege, in 1894, there were more than a thou- 
sand graduates assembled at the banquet in a 
mammoth tent on the campus. Mr. Kellogg 
had, with some difficulty, been persuaded to 
be present. He was, of course, called upon 
for a speech ; and when he rose to respond, 
every graduate, young and old, in the great 
company was instantly on his feet, cheering 
and shouting a glad salute. It was a touch- 
ing and memorable ovation, and the flush of 
troubled happiness that flitted across his 
bronzed and wrinkled face was something long 
to be remembered, as was also his glowing 
tribute of affection for the college, which was 
his answer to the welcome of his brethren. 

In Mr. Kellogg' s student days the chief 
literary interest and activity of the under- 
graduates, and no small part of their more 
formal social life, centred about two societies, 
the Peucinean and the Athenian. Between 
these two societies there was intense rivalry in 
securing accessions from among the more de- 



COLLEGE AND SEMINARY 41 

sirable members of newly entering classes, in 
public exhibitions and anniversary exercises, 
and in the distribution of college and class 
honors. Each society possessed a considerable 
library of carefully selected books, and each 
held regular weekly meetings for literary ex- 
ercises consisting of essays, poems, declama- 
tions, and debates. Kellogg was an active 
and esteemed member of the Peucinean so- 
ciety, and contributed not a little to the 
interest of its meetings in the several features 
of their literary programmes. Mr. Henry H. 
Boody, of the class of 1842, and subsequently 
professor of rhetoric and oratory in the college 
from 1845 to 1854, recalls the fact that at the 
meetings of the Peucinean society, "we used to 
consider a poem by Kellogg as a very rare 
treat," and then adds that perhaps "our liking 
for the man influenced our judgment as to the 
merit of his productions in that line." How- 
ever that may be, it is evident that his gifts of 
tongue and pen were freely exercised during 
his undergraduate days, and that the charm 
of them was felt and acknowledged by his 
college associates. 

In Mr. Kellogg's Junior year a literary 
magazine, the second venture of the kind at 



42 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

Bowdoin, was projected by some of the stu- 
dents, and made its first appearance, under 
the name of the Bowdoin Portfolio, in April, 
1839. Its advent was heralded, in a manner 
somewhat figurative and characteristic of the 
time, by an editorial note, of which the fol- 
lowing are some of the first sentences : — 

"A short time since, as we were sitting 
quietly in our room discussing the common 
topics of the day, we were suddenly surprised 
and pleased by the entrance of a comely 
youth, of an ideal nature, that is, made up of 
the immaterial mind, but who had embodied 
himself in a visible form. He was arrayed in 
a neat, simple garb, evidently preferring pure 
simplicity to ostentatious splendor, and wish- 
ing to attract notice, not so much by a showy 
dress and gorgeous outward appearance, as by 
the spiritual within, made clear and compre- 
hensible by the outward representation. On 
his front he bore the name of ' Bowdoin Port- 
folio,' and in communing with him we found 
a most entertaining and agreeable companion. 
He was just making his debut into the literary 
world, and it was with modesty and timidity 
that he declared to us his intentions of speedily 
making his bow, and paying court to the 
public." 



COLLEGE AND SEMINARY 43 

There is no indication that Mr. Kellogg 
was connected with the editorial board of the 
Portfolio, but there are contributions from 
him in three of the seven numbers that were 
published, and all his contributions are of 
verse. This fact recalls the testimony that 
has been quoted as to the pleasure with which 
his poems were received at the meetings of 
the Peucinean society. Altogether it seems 
as if, during his college days, his tastes led 
him to the cultivation of poetry, and as if 
the impression he made upon his college 
mates was rather by his verse than by his 
prose. 

One of the poems in the Portfolio is a 
clever translation of a Latin epitaph upon a 
moth miller which " came bustling through 
the window directly into the editorial taper, 
and fell lifeless upon the sheet of paper." A 
part of the epitaph in Kellogg' s verse is as 
follows : — 

" Whose greatest crime was to intrude 
Upon a Poet's solitude ; 
Whose saddest fortune was to fly 
In a Poet's lamp, and cheated die. 
Ah ! punishment to rashness due, 
How certain ! and how direful too ! 



44 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

The silly Moth thus seeking light 
Is overwhelmed in shades of night ; 
So Youth pursuing Pleasure's ray 
O'ertakes grim Death upon the way ! " 



The Latin of the epitaph is of that obvious 
kind which an American college boy is likely 
to write, and there is really more distinction 
in Kellogg's translation than in the original. 

The other poems contributed by Kellogg to 
the Portfolio are entitled, " The Phantoms of 
the Mind," and " The Demon of the Sea." 
They are both vigorous in sentiment and cor- 
rect in form, and the opening lines of the 
latter remind us of the author's early, and, 
indeed, lifelong passion for the sea: — 

" Ah, tell me not of your shady dells 
Where the lilies gleam, and the fountain wells, 
Where the reaper rests when his task is o'er, 
And the lake-wave sobs on the verdant shore, 
And the rustic maid, with a heart all free, 
Hies to the well-known trysting-tree ; 
For I'm the God of the rolling sea, 
And the charms of earth are nought to me. 
O'er the thundering chime of the breaking surge, 
On the lightning's wing my pathway urge, 
On thrones of foam right joyous ride, 
'Mid the sullen dash of the angry tide." 



COLLEGE AND SEMINARY 45 

It is not altogether fancy that recognizes in 
such lines as these hints of the impetuous and 
stirring rhetoric of Mr. Kellogg's later prose, 
especially on occasions when his deepest feel- 
ings were moved, and he spoke of love and 
duty, of character and destiny, of life and 
immortality, out of the fulness of his convic- 
tion, and with the ardor and eloquence of his 
sensitive and poetic nature. 

So passed his college days, in the keen en- 
joyment of generous comradeship, in the in- 
stinctive indulgence of his fondness for fun 
and frolic, in the cheerful acceptance of the 
burden of defraying his own expenses, in 
manly fidelity to the appointed studies of the 
course, and in the voluntary and congenial 
exercise of the literary gifts with which he 
was endowed, and through which he has made 
so many of us his debtors. And through it 
all he preserved the unaffected simplicity and 
purity of heart, the reverence for truth, and 
the consideration and charity for his fellows, 
which were the winning characteristics of his 
whole life. 

Mr. Kellogg's theological training in imme- 
diate preparation for the ministry was received 



46 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

at Andover Theological Seminary from 1840 
to 1843. The intellectual and social condi- 
tions which prevail at the professional school 
are quite unlike those of the college. It does 
not have the same atmosphere of venerated 
tradition and compelling custom, nor is it the 
scene of a life so varied and buoyant. The 
students are older, more sedate, and more in- 
tent upon the special studies of the place. 
They have passed through the period of boy- 
ish effervescence and frolic, of ardent and gen- 
erous comradeship, of steadfast friendships and 
changing schemes of life, of relative uncon- 
cern for what lies beyond the horizon of the 
college world — and the period is not to be 
repeated. They are committed to common 
pursuits and ambitions, and are sobered by 
the duties and responsibilities of life to which 
they are sensibly drawing near. 

In his college life Mr. Kellogg found the 
material for a series of sparkling stories, evi- 
dently as congenial to himself as they have 
been interesting to his readers ; but of life in 
the seminary he has given us no picture. 
This is not to the discredit of the honored 
school of theology to which he went, nor does 
it imply that he did not enter into its studies 



COLLEGE AND SEMINABY 47 

and its life with heartiness and joy, but it is 
a natural result of the distinction which has 
been suggested between the college and the 
professional school. The picturesque nook or 
landscape attracts the pencil or the brush of 
the artist, but his choice does not discredit the 
thousand scenes of field and pasture and hill 
and woodland which he passes by as unsuited 
to his artistic purpose. 

It is enough to mention the names of 
Moses Stuart, Bela Edwards, Leonard Woods, 
Ralph Emerson, and Edwards Park, to show 
that Mr. Kellogg was as fortunate in his 
teachers at the seminary as he had been at 
the college. They were men of profound 
learning, of stimulating influence, of conse- 
crated character, and of great and deserved 
reputation. They could not fail to quicken 
and enrich both his intellectual and his spirit- 
ual nature, and to send him forth fully 
instructed, as well as profoundly eager, to 
preach with persuasiveness and pow r er, as he 
did preach for nearly half a century. 

It was while he was a student in the semi- 
nary that Mr. Kellogg wrote the famous 
declamation, "Spartacus to the Gladiators," 
as well as some others, almost equally famous, 



48 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

of the same general character. It was written 
for one of the prescribed rhetorical exercises 
of the course, at which the writer or speaker 
was publicly criticised by members of the 
student body, and also by the professor in 
charge. Mr. Kellogg, always timid at the 
prospect of open and formal criticism of his 
writing or speech, greatly dreaded the ordeal, 
and resolved to write something which should 
so interest his hearers by its unusual subject- 
matter as to divert their minds from the 
thought of criticism. His scheme was com- 
pletely successful. The students listened with 
breathless attention, and were dumb when 
the speech was concluded. To the inquiry of 
Professor Park if there were any criticisms 
to be offered, not a voice was raised; and the 
professor himself remarked that though 
there were some things, perhaps, that might 
be said in criticism, yet it was so admirable a 
specimen of masterful rhetoric that he should 
say nothing. It has been considered so much 
of a masterpiece in its kind, that at Andover 
they still point out No. 20 Bartlett Hall as 
the room in which it was written. 

There is an unmistakable dramatic quality 
in the conception and speech of " Spartacus," 




o 



COLLEGE AND SEMINARY 49 

as there were hints of such a dramatic quality 
in some of Mr. Kellogg's sermons in later 
years, and it is interesting to note that, in his 
Senior year at Andover, he wrote a "dia- 
logue," or brief play, called " The Honest 
Deserter," which was performed by the Philo- 
mathean Society of Phillips Academy. The 
occasion of its presentation was considered of 
so much interest and importance that an elm 
tree was planted in the Phillips yard in com- 
memoration of the event. 

When in his Senior year as a theological 
student Mr. Kellogg went to Harps well to 
preach for some weeks, his personality and 
his preaching, his love of the sea and his 
kindly human qualities, so won the hearts of 
the Harpswell people that they besought him 
to return to Harpswell after his graduation, 
and become their pastor. To their urgent 
request he yielded , being himself much at- 
tracted by the people and their home by the 
sea. It was in 1844 that he was publicly 
installed over the church, and the official tie 
of pastor to the Harpswell church was severed 
only by his death. 



EARLY HARPSWELL DAYS 

Wilmot Brookings Mitchell 

Harpswell, Maine, is a seaboard, almost a 
sea-girt, town. It is made up of a long, nar- 
row neck of land and forty islands, some 
containing hundreds of acres, others almost 
entirely covered by the tide. Indenting the 
shore of this peninsula and the larger islands 
are sheltered inlets of deep water well suited 
to the building and harboring of ships. Hither 
came, during the first half of the eighteenth 
century, from Boston, Scituate, York, and 
other settlements, men and women of Puri- 
tan stock and Puritan ways of thinking ; 
and here grew up large families, hardy and 
God-fearing, some farmers, but most of them 
fishermen, sailors, and ship-builders. 

Elijah Kellogg could not long attend 
Bowdoin College, only a few miles distant, 
without being attracted to these sea-going 
people of Harpswell ; for Kellogg was born 

60 



EABLT HARP SWELL BAYS 51 

with webbed feet. When hardly out of the 
cradle, family tradition has it, he went to sail 
in Back Cove, Portland, with a sugar-box for 
a boat and his shirt for a sail. As a young- 
ster he would often steal to the Fore Street 
wharves to watch the ships, and he was never 
so happy as when listening to the yarns 
which the sailors spun. He says of himself, 
"At ten years of age I began to climb the 
rigging, and at fifteen went to sea." His 
years in the " fo'c'sle," with all their perilous 
and disagreeable tasks, only intensified his 
love for the water. As a Freshman he took 
supreme delight in sailing with a good com- 
rade, on a Saturday afternoon, in his little 
cat-rigged boat, the Cadet, among the islands 
of Casco Bay. 

One of these half-holiday expeditions af- 
fected, as it happened, his whole after-life. 
The Cadet, belated by wind and tide, ran 
ashore on Birch Island, and " Captain " Kel- 
logg and crew, supperless and weary, sought 
shelter at the house of Captain John Skol- 
field. Mr. Kellogg never forgot how cosily 
the light from the house that evening 
shone through the hop vines growing over 
and around the windows. The hospitable 



52 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

islander gave the wayfarers a warm welcome 
and a plentiful supper ; for which hospitality, 
before the evening ended, Kellogg, full of 
stories of college and the sea, made his host 
feel well repaid. Thus began his acquaintance 
with the Birch Islanders, — the Skolfields, 
Curtises, and Merrimans, — an acquaintance 
which was to ripen into a life-long friendship. 
The men on this island, hardy, powerful, and 
fearless, at once became heroes in the admir- 
ing eyes of this venture-loving student. After 
this he spent many happy hours building 
boats, gunning and fishing with Captain John, 
or spinning yarns and reading aloud with 
" Uncle Joe " Curtis, — a man who read every 
book he could get hold of and who remem- 
bered everything he read. 

From Birch Island to Harpswell Neck, 
where Eaton's store and the church were 
located, is but a short row ; there Kellogg 
often went to buy something for his boat, or 
to worship on the Sabbath. Before long he 
had many friends and admirers upon the 
mainland ; for these people had but to see the 
sharp-eyed, brown, wiry " colleger," and hear 
his stories, or listen to his earnest and elo- 
quent exhortations in the prayer-meeting, in 



EARLY HARP SWELL DAYS 53 

order to love him. It was with them, as 
well as with him, love at first sight; and 
by the time he was a Sophomore they had 
plighted troth. Learning that he was to 
study for the ministry, they must have him 
for their preacher; and he, half jokingly 
perhaps, told them if he lived to get through 
the seminary and they built a new church, 
he would come to preach for them. 

After graduation at Bowdoin, Kellogg be- 
gan the study of theology at Andover. When 
his course at the seminary was near its close, 
Professor Thomas C. Upham, who had been 
so stanch a friend of the Harpswell church 
that Mr. Kellogg once said it owed its very 
existence to him, came to Andover with a 
message from the Harpswell people that the 
timber for the new church was on the spot, 
and they still wanted him for a preacher. 
The bearer of the message evidently saw in 
the young preacher the salvation of the 
Harpswell church ; for he reenforced this re- 
minder of the promise Kellogg had made in 
his student days by the emphatic prophecy 
that God would curse him as long as he lived 
if he did not go. Influenced somewhat by 
these prophetic words, but probably much 



54 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

more by his love for the place and the people 
and the opportunity he saw of doing good, he 
turned away from a call to a much larger 
church and went to Harpswell, where, as he 
said many years later, he found that " obedi- 
ence is sweet and not servitude." 

Although Mr. Kellogg, in response to this in- 
formal invitation, began at once to supply the 
pulpit in the old church, a formal call to settle 
as pastor was not extended to him until the 
next year. The reason for this becomes ap- 
parent upon an examination of the church 
records. 

The original Harpswell church and parish 
were at this time passing through a transition 
period. Formed in 1751, the parish was at 
first identical with the town. The preacher's 
salary and other church expenses were as- 
sessed by the town officers as taxes. But 
later, other churches having been built and 
other denominations having sprung up, many 
citizens objected to being taxed for the support 
of the minister, and some absolutely refused 
to pay such taxes. A troublesome question 
concerning the control and ownership of the 
first church building also arose between the 
town and the parish. Accordingly the sup- 



EABLT HAEPSWELL DAYS 55 

porters of the Congregational church organ- 
ized a new society and erected a new church 
building. 

This church was dedicated September 28, 
1843. For this dedication the following poem 
was written by Mr. Kellogg : — 



" Here, 'mid the strife of wind and waves 
Upon a wild and stormy sod, 
Beside our fathers' homes and graves, 
We consecrate a house to God. 

" Here, on many a pebbly shore, 
Old Ocean flings his feathery foam, 
And close beside the breaker's roar 
The seaman builds his island home. 

" 'Mid giant cliffs that proudly breast 
And backward fling the winter's spray, 
'Mid isles in greenest verdure dressed, 
'Tis meet that rugged men should pray. 

" Its spire shall be the last to meet 
The parting seaman's lingering eye, 
The first his homeward step to greet, 
And point him to a home on high. 

" Here shall the force of sacred truth 
Defeat the Tempter's wildest rage, 



56 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

Subdue the fiery heart of youth 

And cheer the drooping strength of age. 

" And when the watch of life is o'er 
May we, where runs no stubborn tide, 
No billows break, nor tempests roar, 
In Heaven's high port at anchor ride." 

The records show that on April 25, 1844, 
with Professor Upham as moderator, it was 
" moved and voted that the church of the 
Centre Congregational Society in Harpswell 
do hereby invite and call Mr. Elijah Kellogg 
to settle with them as their pastor in the 
Gospel ministry and [do agree] to pay [him] 
by subscription $300 a year for four years 
from the first day of June, 1844. " This 
call to what proved to be a long and fruit- 
ful pastorate Mr. Kellogg, on May 4, 1844, 
accepted in these simple and earnest words : 
" Brethren and Beloved : I have considered 
your call to settle with you as a minister of 
the New Testament. It appears to me to be 
the will of God pointed out by his providence 
that I comply with your invitation, which I 
accordingly do, praying that it may be a con- 
nection full of blessed fruits both to pastor 
and people." 




mmmmm — --* «p^.iV' 




EABLT HABP SWELL DAYS 57 

The new pastor was ordained on June 18, 
1844. He entered with enthusiasm into his 
work. Among these ragged farmers, fisher- 
men, and sailors, he sought in all ways to 
expound and exemplify the teachings of Him 
who many years before taught the fishermen 
of Galilee. On the Sabbath he preached ser- 
mons so interesting and eloquent that people 
came in boat loads from the islands to hear his 
words ; and he entered familiarly and sympa- 
thetically into the home life of his parishion- 
ers. "His little boat might be seen in all 
weathers flitting to and fro between mainland 
and islands as he made the circuit of his watery 
parish in visits of friendship or of consolation, 
to officiate at a marriage or a funeral. He 
was heartily welcome in every home, for he 
knew their domestic life, and seemed to be a 
part of it; and he talked of the sea and of 
Him who made it in a way that brought him 
close to the hearts of his people, and made 
religion seem a natural and practical and im- 
portant part of daily life. He rebuked wrong- 
doing, recognized and applauded every good 
act or effort, composed differences between 
neighbors, helped in manual toil, comforted 
the afflicted, gave to the poor, — and all in 



58 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

such a simple, unconventional, and genuine 
fashion, that his people felt that he was one 
of them, only better than the rest. 1 " 

The pastor of the early forties was often 
formal, arbitrary, and autocratic, seeking to 
drive rather than to lead his flock. Between 
pastor and people there was too often a great 
gulf fixed. But this humorous, unpretentious, 
sincere man did not hold himself as of finer 
clay than his people. He liked to plant and 
reap with his parishioners. To pull rock weed 
and pitch hay and chop wood, to swing the 
flail and hold the plough, were not beneath his 
dignity. 

One Sunday during these first years of his 
pastorate, just after reading the usual notices, 
he said : " Widow Jones's grass, I see, needs 
mowing. I shall be in her field to-morrow 
morning at half-past four with scythe, rake, 
and pitch-fork. I shall be glad to see all of 
you there who wish to come and help me." 
The next morning found a good crew of men 
and boys in the field ready for work. Among 
them was a man six feet two in his stock- 

1 From an address by Professor Henry L. Chapman, 
delivered at the Maine State Congregational Conference, 
September, 1901. 



EARLY HARP SWELL DATS 59 

ing-feet and weighing some 250 pounds. 
Captain Griggs we will call him. As they 
were working up the field near each other, 
the captain said, "Parson, I am going to 
cut your corners this morning." The little 
wiry parson, who had served a good appren- 
ticeship upon his uncle's farm in Grorham, whet 
his scythe and kept his counsel. The big cap- 
tain didn't cut any of his corners that day. 
Indeed, the story goes that before noon the 
man who thought that he could mow around 
the parson, dropped under a tree, exhausted 
by the terrific pace that Kellogg set. 

Before he had completed the first year of 
his ministry, Mr. Kellogg was elected a mem- 
ber of the school committee, on which he 
served several years. That he sought to do 
his duty on the school board faithfully is 
attested by the resolution — heroic it will seem 
to some — which he recorded on December 8, 
1844. " Having never till this time been fully 
convinced of the importance of mathematics 
in strengthening the mind and preparing it to 
investigate truth, and never having been able 
to conquer my dislike for them till led to them 
by the study of philosophy and an impression 
of the interdependence of all philosophy and all 



60 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

science, I now begin at the bottom and deter- 
mine to push my researches as far as possible 
and to set down whatever may be worthy 
of note. I this day commenced Emerson's 
Arithmetic in order to be prepared to do my 
duty thoroughly as one of the superintending 
committee." As committeeman, he did more 
than make a perfunctory visit twice a term. 
He kept his eyes open for the alert, promising, 
studious lad. Such a boy he encouraged, 
advised concerning his studies, and often 
urged to go to Master Swallow's school in 
Brunswick and fit for college. These boys 
he picked carefully, for he didn't believe in 
"wasting nails by driving them into rotten 
wood." 

From the first of his ministry to the very 
end, Mr. Kellogg showed an instinctive knowl- 
edge of boys, and originality in dealing with 
them. Any just estimate of his work and 
character must rate high his tact in hand-, 
ling and influencing boys. Wherever he 
preached, boys were quick to see that he 
was their friend, a man after their own 
heart. They soon found that this uncon- 
ventional, simple, eloquent little man, who 
had a way of throwing his arm over a boy's 



EARLY HARP SWELL DAYS 61 

shoulder and walking home from the evening 
meeting with him, was more than an ordinary 
preacher. They found that he could under- 
stand them. They could tell him their jokes 
and their serious plans, and he could see 
through their eyes and hear through their 
ears. They found that he, more perhaps 
than any other man they had ever known, 
was all the time at heart a boy himself; 
that he was interested in them not simply 
as a professional duty, but because he 
couldn't help it. He loved boys, was happy 
in their companionship, and delighted to 
talk of his own boyhood and college days, 
— of the time when the frogs by croak- 
ing " K'logg, K'logg," called him away from 
school, or when he in recitation informed 
his dignified professor that Poly carp was one 
of the many daughters of Mr. Carp. He 
would swim and sail and farm and fish with 
the boys in his parish, and then, at an unex- 
pected moment, but in a manner not repel- 
lent, he would kneel down in their boat or 
in the field by the side of a cock of hay or 
a shock of corn and pray with them. 

Many men to-day who were born and bred 
in Harpswell like to tell of the way he won 



62 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

and kept their friendship. Here, for example, 
was a boy whom he was taking to Portland 
in his boat ; the youngster felt very proud, 
for his grandmother had intrusted to him 
her eggs to take to market. But alas ! in 
disembarking he dropped the basket, and the 
eggs were smashed. The boy's extremity, 
however, was the preacher's opportunity. By 
paying for those eggs from his own. pocket- 
book, he saved the young marketman no end 
of humiliation, and bound him to his soul 
with a hoop of steel. 

If one may judge by his journal and cor- 
respondence, no work that Mr. Kellogg did 
during his long life afforded him greater sat- 
isfaction or yielded larger returns in affection 
and gratitude and right living than his work 
with boys. When, for instance, he had 
been on Harpswell Neck less than a year, 
he heard that a schooner had put into 
Potts' s Point, some ten miles below his home, 
with a boy on board who had broken his leg. 
He knew that this boy on a small schooner 
in a strange place would need sadly the com- 
forts of home. He hastened to him, brought 
him to his boarding-place, put him in his own 
bed, and nursed him as he would have nursed 



EABLY HABPSWELL BAYS 63 

a son. When the boy was able to go to sea 
again, having no money, he could repay his 
benefactor for all the trouble and expense he 
had been, only with words of kindness and 
gratitude. Years afterwards, however, when 
Mr. Kellogg was preaching in Boston, a well- 
dressed man and woman came into the sailors' 
church, and appeared much interested in the 
sermon. At the close of the service they 
came forward and spoke to the preacher. 
The boy had now become a man — the mate 
of a large ship. The bread which the young 
minister had cast upon the waters now re- 
turned to him after twenty years, in the 
words of affection and encouragement with 
which this man and his wife expressed 
their gratitude, also in the $50 which, as 
they bade him good-by, they left in his 
hand. 

For some years Bowdoin College, recog- 
nizing Mr. Kellogg' s power in getting at the 
heart of boys, had the custom of sending to 
him some of the students whom it rusti- 
cated; and his strong, manly character 
brought more than one boy to his better 
self. That his treatment of these boys was 
not exactly that of Squeers, this instance 



64 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

will show. One young fellow whom the 
college sent him was especially rebellious 
at first. Through cheap story papers he had 
come cheek by jowl with old Sleuth and 
his boon companions, and he sought to emu- 
late them by carrying a revolver and a dirk 
knife. Mr. Kellogg told him that as he would 
not find any Indians or many wild beasts 
down there, he had better surrender his 
weapons. This the young man did after 
much reluctance. During the first day, Mr. 
Kellogg left him to himself, as he was 
inclined to sulk. In the evening he began 
to talk to the boy indifferently at first, after- 
wards kindly. All the time — lover-like — 
he kept edging up nearer to him on the big 
sofa, and finally in his genuine, whole-souled 
way, put his hand affectionately on the lad's 
shoulder. To such treatment the young fel- 
low was not accustomed. It was so different 
from his over-stern father's that it threw him 
entirely off his guard. He could not with- 
stand the man's kindly interest and genuine 
manner. His rebellious spirit was broken. 
The boy dreaded his father's rebuke, and 
the next day, unknown to him, Mr. Kellogg 
wrote to his mother, telling all about her son 



EARLY HARPSWELL DAYS 65 

and urging that the father write to him kindly 
and not sternly. A few days after this the 
young fellow was surprised and delighted to 
receive from home a letter of forgiveness and 
encouragement. 

On July 4, there was to be a celebration 
in Portland. The boy wished but did not 
expect to go. " Well," said Mr. Kellogg one 
day after they had been speaking of the mat- 
ter, " I am afraid you can't go. I have no 
authority to let you. But, then, I really want 
to attend that celebration myself, and I can't 
be expected to leave you at home alone." 
When the day of celebration came, the student 
and the preacher could have been seen tramp- 
ing the streets of Portland, both, no doubt, 
having a right royal good time. 

A few years ago, the heart of the aged 
minister was uplifted by the assurance that he 
had dealt aright with this high-spirited lad. 
A successful business man, the vice-president 
of a large western railroad, came many miles 
to look again into his kindly face and to tell 
him that those weeks of companionship full 
of honest counsel marked the turning-point in 
his life. 

For the first five years of his life in Harps- 



66 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

well, Mr. Kellogg boarded at the home of one 
of his parishioners, Mr. Joseph Eaton. Here 
his mother spent the summers with him, his 
father having died in 1843. In 1849 he 
bought a farm of thirty-five acres at North 
Harpswell, and at once began to build a house 
that he might provide a suitable home for his 
lame and aged mother. The location of this 
house is an attractive one. It is on the west- 
ern side of Harpswell Neck, a half-mile or so 
from the main-travelled road. From it the 
land slopes gently an eighth of a mile, perhaps, 
to the shore of Middle Bay. From the win- 
dows of the house which he here built, one 
peeping through the oaks and spruces on a 
summer's day may see to the west, across 
the sparkling water of the channel, the green 
sloping bank of Simpson's Point, or to the 
south Birch and Scrag islands and several 
of the other 363 which dot the waters of 
Casco Bay. The house itself is a wooden, 
two-story, L-shaped farm-house facing the 
west, bespeaking nothing of luxury, but 
large enough to be airy in the summer, 
and in the winter a good place, as Captain 
Ehines would say, in which to ride out the 
storm. 



EABLT HARPSWELL DAYS 67 

Much of the material of which the house 
is made Mr. Kellogg brought here from 
different parts of his parish ; some strong 
timbers from Ragged Island, three miles out 
at sea, fine sand for his mortar from Sand 
Island, and the door-stone from Birch. Nearly 
all of the larger timbers in his house this 
preacher cut and hauled himself. And when 
they were on the spot, seventy-five of his 
friends and neighbors, giving him a good 
surprise, as did those of Lion Ben in the Elm 
Island stories, came and hewed the timbers 
and framed his house. Little wonder is it 
that this house, with its attractive surround- 
ings and its pleasant associations, was ever to 
him the most beautiful place on earth. 

He lived here with his mother and house- 
keeper until 1852, when his mother died. 
This bereavement took a strong influence out 
of his life ; for the tactful, firm- willed mother 
had played a large part in moulding the char- 
acter of her impetuous, venturesome son. In 
1854 he married Miss Hannah Pearson Pome- 
roy, daughter of Rev. Thaddeus Pomeroy of 
Syracuse, New York, previously pastor of the 
Congregational church of Gorham, Maine. 
Three children were born to them : a son who 



68 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

died in infancy ; Frank Gilman, at present in 
business in Boston ; and Mary Catherine, the 
wife of Mr. Harry Batchelder of Melrose 
Highlands, Massachusetts. 

The circumstances of Mr. Kellogg' s mar- 
riage are characteristic. While he always 
maintained a due respect for women, he was 
preeminently a man's man or perhaps better 
a boy's man. It is not surprising, then, to be 
told that his wife was " recommended to him." 
A friend of his at Gorham, rallying him a bit 
on his bachelorhood, asked why in the world 
he did not marry. " Oh," said he, '" I can 
find no one to have me." Whereupon his 
friend replied, " There is your old schoolmate, 
Hannah Pomeroy of Syracuse, a minister's 
daughter, well educated, a good school-teacher, 
and smart as a whip ; just the woman for a 
minister's wife." What had been the preacher's 
previous plans concerning matrimony is not 
known, but before long he took a trip to Syra- 
cuse, and when he returned, the bargain was 
practically made. Though apparently so busi- 
nesslike a transaction, this proved to be for 
more than forty years a happy union. His 
friend spoke truly. Had Mr. Kellogg searched 
many years, he could not have found a better 




Hannah Pearson Pomeroy Kellogg. 
Wife of Elijah Kellogg. 



EARLY HARP SWELL DAYS 69 

helpmate than Hannah Pomeroy. Attractive, 
sincere, energetic, practical, she was a prudent, 
encouraging wife and a wise, loving mother. 

The folk-lore of Harpswell contains many 
stories of this minister's daring on sea and 
land and of his original ways in dealing with 
both saints and sinners ; so original, indeed, 
that one rough old admirer on Ragged Island, 
whom Mr. Kellogg had influenced for good in 
a way that no other minister had ever thought 
of doing, said that when Parson Kellogg died, 
he was going to carve upon his tombstone 
three letters — " D. F. M." The last two were 
to stand for " Funny Minister." 

This daring parson had upon his farm a 
bull that rendered himself extremely ob- 
noxious to visitors who found it convenient 
to reach his house by crossing the pasture. 
The bull, therefore, must be disciplined. The 
preacher first harnessed Mr. Taurus to the 
front wheels of a heavy cart, preparatory to 
putting him over the road and showing him 
who was master. But before the guiding ropes 
had been adequately arranged, the bull on a 
mad rush took to the woods, leaving in his 
trail fragments of cart-wheels and harness. 
The little minister, however, was not thus to 



70 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

be outdone. The next day, at flood-tide, with 
tempting fodder he allured the bull to the end 
of the wharf and in an unguarded moment 
shoved him into the bay. An excellent swim- 
mer, he then quickly jumped astride the bull's 
back. By grasping his horns and intermit- 
tently thrusting his head under water, with a 
prowess which a " broncho-buster " might well 
envy, he conquered his steed. Thus, as all 
stories rightly end, they lived happily together 
ever afterwards. 

Of this pastor's unconventional methods in 
accepting and dispensing gifts of charity, the 
following are illustrative. One afternoon, just 
before tea, he happened into the house of a 
master ship-builder in his parish, a man of 
property and influence. The old gentleman 
was on the best of terms with the young 
preacher, and after passing the time of day, 
began to banter him on the condition of his 
boots, which were muddy and somewhat the 
worse for wear. "Parson, what makes you 
wear such disreputable-looking foot-gear ? " he 
said. " Throw those boots away and let me 
get you a new pair." The parson waited till 
later before he fired the return shot. After 
all were comfortably seated at the tea-table 



EABLY HABP SWELL DATS 71 

and he had said grace, he asked to be excused 
for a moment and went to the sitting room. 
There a good fire was blazing upon the hearth, 
and near by were the master-builder's best 
shoes. Quickly came off the parson's old 
boots, and into the fire they went ; and as 
quickly went on to stay the master-builder's 
best calfskins. 

One winter day while on Orr's Island, he 
got an inkling that a family there was in dis- 
tress. By skilful inquiry he learned that the 
father had been drinking badly, and the mother 
and children needed food and fuel. Something 
must be done at once to relieve them. Going 
to the house of a well-to-do parishioner, he 
requested the use of his horse and sled for 
an hour or two. When they were ready, he 
quickly drove up to the man's woodpile and 
loaded the sled generously, while the owner 
stood by in wonderment. The only explana- 
tion given was : " That family down there 
need fuel badly. You've got a plenty, and 
I'm going to haul them down a good load." 
And that was explanation enough, for Parson 
Kellogg offered it. 

Although so familiar and informal in his 
social and pastoral relations, as a preacher he 



72 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

never hesitated to point out to his people 
their duty in language that was unmistak- 
able. Soon after the new church was 
built, for example, he told them that in- 
creased privilege means ever increased respon- 
sibility. " God has given you," he said, " a 
commodious and elegant place of worship. 
Why ? That you might sit down and admire 
it and be proud of it ? Do that, and He will 
wither you to the root. Do it, and He will 
send leanness into your souls. My dear friends, 
we had better, like our Puritan forefathers on 
the coast of Holland, kneel down among the 
rocks and seaweed in the cold winter to pray 
to God with the humble spirit with which 
they prayed than to worship Him here in 
peace and comfort, surrounded with tasteful 
decorations, without that humility. You have 
heard of congratulation and praise as much as 
you ought to hear. I wish you to look at 
your increased responsibility. As God has 
made you first in point of privilege, be not 
by abusing those privileges the last to attain 
salvation." 

In his pulpit, with plain-spoken words such 
as these, and with quaint phrases, and apt 
illustrations drawn from the farm, the forest, 



EARLY HARP SWELL DAYS 73 

and the sea, this preacher quickened the con- 
science, and broadened the sympathies, and 
strengthened the faith of the farmers, fisher- 
men, and sailors, who heard him gladly. As 
a preacher, " he seemed," says one who knew 
him well, "a prophet in the authority with 
which he spoke, an evangelist in the tender- 
ness with which he appealed to the conscience 
and set forth the promises of the Gospel, a 
poet often in the simple beauty and grace 
with which he portrayed the conditions of 
human life, and discoursed of the deep things 
of God." 



THE SEAMAN'S FRIEND 

Georgb Kimball 

At its annual meeting, May 17, 1854, the 
Boston Seaman's Friend Society accepted the 
resignation of Rev. George W. Bourne, pastor 
of the Mariners' Church and chaplain of the 
Sailors' Home. The board of managers then 
began the search for "a suitable man" for 
the vacant position, and their choice fell upon 
Rev. Elijah Kellogg of Harpswell, Maine. 

Mr. Kellogg began his duties in September 
of that year, with his accustomed earnest- 
ness, and under his ministry the attendance 
at the church increased, and a new impulse 
was given to the society's work. 

He first appeared before the society at its 
twenty-seventh anniversary, held in Tremont 
Temple, May 30, 1855. A large audience was 
assembled. President Alpheus Hardy intro- 
duced him in complimentary terms, and he 

74 



THE SEAMAN'S FRIEND 75 

made an eloquent address. His " suitability" 
as the seaman's friend and pastor is shown in 
these extracts : " The greater portion of my life 
has been spent among seamen, either at sea or 
on shore. The first personal effort, to any ex- 
tent, I made for the salvation of souls was while 
teaching among a community of sailors. The 
first sermon I preached was to sailors. The 
first couple I united in marriage were a sailor 
and his bride. The first child I baptized was 
a sailor's child. The first burial service I per- 
formed was over the body of a seaman. The 
society with which I have been connected dur- 
ing the last eleven years is with scarcely an 
exception composed of sailors and their fami- 
lies. There is not a house in the parish in 
which the roar of the surf may not be heard, 
and in many of them the Atlantic flings its 
spray upon the door-stone. . . . The men who 
interest seamen and do them good have not 
any recipe for it ; neither can they impart it to 
others. It is all instinctive. They love the 
webbed feet, and the webbed feet love them." 
Mr. Kellogg was at this time forty-one years 
old. His pleasing personal appearance and his 
hearty, rugged, forceful utterance made a 
favorable impression upon his hearers. 



76 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

The task he had undertaken was by no 
means an easy one. It involved hard and 
constant work, often of a kind little, if at all, 
like that of the average clergyman. On the 
Sabbath there were in the Mariners' Church 
three services for public worship, and the 
Sunday-school. In addition to this work upon 
the Sabbath, Mr. Kellogg conducted a social 
religious meeting in the reading room of the 
Sailors' Home upon one evening of each week, 
and in the winter lectured occasionally in the 
church upon topics of vital interest. He visited 
sailors upon shipboard and in hospital, of- 
fered the comforts of religion to the sick and 
dying, and often communicated to loved ones 
the parting message they would never other- 
wise have received. For this work the salary 
was necessarily small, and the material equip- 
ment not of the best; but Mr. Kellogg did 
not hesitate. He threw himself into the work 
with zeal and enthusiasm. 

From the establishment of the Seaman's 
Friend Society in 1827 to July 12, 1852, re- 
ligious services were held at the Sailors' 
Home, but upon the latter date the building 
was burned. The church at the corner of 
Summer and Sea streets, which had formerly 



THE SEAMAN'S FRIEND "11 

been owned and used by the Christian Bap- 
tists, was soon after purchased, and on Decem- 
ber 30, 1852, was dedicated to the work for 
sailors. A church building, in these days, like 
the modest bethel in Summer Street would 
be regarded as quaint in appearance and ill- 
adapted to its uses. It was inferior, in many 
ways, even to other churches of its day, but it 
was easily accessible to those to whom it es- 
pecially ministered (wharves to the south were 
then much more fully utilized by shipping than 
they now are), and was in the centre of a favor- 
ite residential district ; for Fort Hill and sur- 
rounding streets were at that time mainly 
occupied by pretentious dwellings. 

The Sailors' Home, when rebuilt, was a 
large brick structure upon the eastern slope of 
Fort Hill, at 99 Purchase Street. Here, with 
Mr. John 0. Chaney as its superintendent, 
many of the brave carriers of the commerce of 
the world were comfortably housed and cared 
for. The Home had a large reading room 
and library, and besides providing good board 
and home comforts, it did much from time to 
time for the relief of shipwrecked and desti- 
tute sailors. Often hundreds of sailors were 
here. The very year Mr. Kellogg began his 



78 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

work it sheltered 2458, and during his chap- 
laincy of nearly eleven years 25,358 were 
beneath its roof. 

In urging the need and importance of such 
an institution as a haven of rest, a " port in 
a storm," Mr. Kellogg once said : " Suppose 
twenty-five seamen from Calcutta, with beard 
and hair of 130 days' growth, hammocks, 
canvas bags, sheath knives, chests lashed up 
with tarred rigging, redolent of bilge water, 
with a monkey or two, and three or four 
parrots, should drive up to the Revere 
House in a North End wagon, and say, ' We 
want to stop here ; our money is as good as 
anybody's,' would they stop there ? Would 
their money be as good as anybody's ? I trow 
not. Let them, repulsed from the Revere, 
go to the Marlboro, — a temperance, pious 
house, prayers night and morning, — and tell 
the proprietor if he does not take them in they 
must go to a place that leads to a drunkard's 
grave and the drunkard's hell, would they be 
taken in there, think you ? This shows the 
need of a Sailors' Home, does it not ? " 

When Mr. Kellogg had been at work 
awhile, Captain Andrew Bartlett of Plymouth, 
a retired ship-master, was employed by the 



THE SEAMAN'S FBIEND 79 

society as a missionary helper. Always faith- 
ful and zealous, as "a lieutenant to Mr. 
Kellogg," — so he styled himself , — Captain 
Bartlett proved of valuable assistance. With 
his aid libraries were placed upon shipboard 
to be managed by Christian sailors, and 
the minor details of the work went forward 
successfully. 

Another fruitful source of increased life and 
enthusiasm in the work came early in Mr. 
Kellogg' s pastorate. It was a body of young 
men drawn by the personal magnetism of the 
popular preacher, inspired by his earnestness 
and devotion, and moved by their own desire 
to be of service in the good cause. He issued 
no special call, made no urgent appeal, for 
these helpers. One by one they came, im- 
pelled by the promptings of the Holy Spirit. 
They rallied like a forlorn hope in a desperate 
encounter, each feeling that his services were 
needed. They were ready for any service 
their Divine Guide and their beloved leader 
might require of them, should it carry them 
even to "moving accidents by flood and field." 
They had heard the " still, small voice," and 
had responded, " Here am I ; send me." 

Captain Bartlett early reported: "The 



80 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

young men of the church are Mr. Kellogg' s 
body-guard. They are a sort of flying artil- 
lery. They visit the receiving-ship, the 
Marine Hospital, and other places. They hold 
meetings, and talk with sailors." 

Mr. Kellogg in an annual address before 
the society said : " An army of young men are 
putting their strength to the wheel of a diffi- 
cult and hitherto well-nigh discouraging work. 
It was feared by many, when these efforts 
began, that they were the outgrowth of ro- 
mance and the love of novelty, and would be 
of transient duration ; but they have assumed 
the same enduring character as the other de- 
partments of labor. At the hospital, on board 
the receiving-ship, at the Mariners' Church 
on Sabbath evenings, they have entered heart 
and hand into this work, and, from their very 
youth, adapted to the impulsive nature of sea- 
men, they have been in the hands of God a 
most efficient instrumentality for good." 

This army of young men grew very rapidly 
during the revival of 1858, and by the begin- 
ning of the Civil War was of creditable size. 
At the Sunday evening prayer-meetings it 
made itself especially felt. On these occa- 
sions the church was always crowded. Minis- 




Elijah Kellogg at Forty-three. 

1856. 



THE SEAMAN'S FRIEND 81 

ters of the Gospel, merchants, young people, 
and captains of ships sat side by side with 
men whom every wind had blown upon, from 
the equator to the pole, all uniting in fer- 
vent prayer to the same great Father, all striv- 
ing to bring each other to a knowledge of the 
truth. Not an evangelical denomination in 
the city was unrepresented, and it is impos- 
sible to form even an approximate estimate of 
the amount of good accomplished, for these 
meetings were exceptional both in number of 
attendants and in interest shown. 

But war came, and it found the Mariners' 
Church patriotic to the very core. Mr. Kel- 
logg had to report that sixty-eight of his 
"body-guard" had enlisted to fight for the 
preservation of the Union, sixteen of them 
teachers in the Sunday-school. In 1864, in 
his address before the society, he said : " At 
the beginning of the war there were connected 
with the Mariners' Church a body of young 
men, landsmen, who were deeply interested in 
the conversion of sailors and enjoyed their 
confidence and affection. They, with a single 
exception, entered the army. Poor and with- 
out patronage, they enlisted as privates. Five 
of them have been promoted." 



82 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

Those connected with the Mariners' Church 
when the war opened will never forget the 
stirring scenes in the church meetings or the 
eloquent words of patriotism and faith with 
which the pastor bade his " boys " Godspeed as 
they went forth into the great struggle. One 
Sunday evening in April, 1861, he spoke feel- 
ingly of the impending crisis. He was so 
prophetic, outlining so accurately what after- 
ward proved to be the extent and course of 
the secession movement, that many of his 
hearers have since thought him to have been 
almost inspired. When he had finished, he 
requested three of his " boys " who had en- 
listed, one of whom had that very day been 
admitted to the church, to step to the desk. 
Then, amid a scene such as is rarely witnessed 
in a sacred edifice, he talked to them person- 
ally, while the large audience showed great 
sympathy and the liveliest interest. When the 
enthusiasm had reached its highest pitch, he 
drew from under his desk three revolvers and 
passed them to the young men, bidding them 
go forth in the name of God, in a cause which 
he declared to be as holy as any that ever a 
people contended for. In 1865, referring feel- 
ingly to the services of these young men in 



THE SEAMAN'S FRIEND .83 

the field, he said : " They departed with the 
prayers and good wishes of the congregation. 
One of them, but nineteen years old, fell at 
Gettysburg; another, 1 having been twice se- 
verely wounded, has returned with honor, 
and the third, having received three wounds, 
and led his company at the storming of 
Fort Fisher, still remains a captain in the 
service." 

The work was often attended by interesting 
and sometimes humorous incidents. During 
a meeting in the reading room of the Home 
one evening an intoxicated sailor created a 
disturbance at the door. He wanted to enter, 
and had to be held back by force. The meet- 
ing closed, and the "flying artillery," under 
the leadership of Mr. Kellogg, was about 
starting for the nine o'clock prayer-meeting 
at the rooms of the Young Men's Christian 
Association in Tremont Temple. The inebri- 
ate took it into his head to go too. He was 
reasoned with, but without effect. " You 
fellows have got a good thing," said he, " and 
I want some of it." The leader and his " body- 
guard " started, and sure enough, the disciple 

1 Readers will be interested to know that Mr. Kimball, 
the author of this chapter, is here referred to. — W. B. M. 



84 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

of Bacchus followed. Mr. Kellogg protested, 
but in vain, and finally ordered " the flying 
artillery" to take the double-quick. The man 
then showed that he, too, could sprint a bit 
even if he did happen to be "loaded." He 
managed to keep the party in sight, and al- 
though he met many obstacles and collided 
with a horse-car in crossing Washington Street, 
he succeeded in landing a fairly good second. 
He was not allowed to enter the prayer-meet- 
ing, however, as he was still inclined to be 
noisy, but was " held " in an adjoining room. 
The young men got him back to the Home 
after the meeting, and he again declared it 
his purpose to have religion anyhow, in spite 
of opposition. Next morning he appeared, 
demanded a pen, and with the air of a usurper 
of a throne about to banish all who had in 
any way opposed him, placed his name upon 
the temperance pledge. That evening in the 
prayer-meeting he requested prayers. He 
gave his heart to Christ, became a devoted 
worker, and a year afterward, returning from 
a voyage, was found to be still in the faith. 
But sinners had to be brought to repentance 
ordinarily. They rarely came unsought, like 
this poor wayfarer, and thus Mr. Kellogg and 



THE SEAMAN'S FRIEND 85 

his helpers always found plenty to do. It 
was an inspiring scene when the leader and 
his " body-guard " set out for the prayer- 
meeting upon the receiving-ship Ohio or 
returned therefrom. In going, they usually- 
met at the Young Men's Christian Association, 
proceeding thence via " Foot and Walker's 
line," two by two, keeping step to the music 
of their own voices. " The Old Mountain 
Tree," " A Life on the Ocean Wave," and 
many other popular songs of the day, as well 
as hymns, were sung. Among the favorite 
hymns was " Say, brothers, will you meet 
us?" It had that stirring chorus, "Glory, 
glory, hallelujah." This was sung a great deal, 
and it finally became the foundation of the 
famous " John Brown Song," to the rhythm 
of which thousands marched in the great war 
for the nation's life. 

No small part of Mr. Kellogg's success in 
this work came from his intimate knowledge 
of the seaman's nature. Sailors are in many 
ways peculiar, and in order to be of service 
to them a worker must proceed understand- 
ingly. They regard themselves as in a meas- 
ure set apart from their fellow-men. One of 
them once wrote : — 



86 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

"I am alone — the wide, wide world 
Holds not a heart that beats for me ; 
Fve seen my brightest hopes grow dim, 
As fades the twilight o'er the sea." 

That Mr. Kellogg understood this loneliness 
and had a large sympathy for the men " that 
go down to the sea in ships, that do business 
in great waters," these eloquent words of his 
well show : " In respect to the great mass of 
seamen, they neither own land, build houses, 
nor rear families. They neither give nor 
receive those sympathies and attentions which 
create among men a mutual dependence and 
attachment. When they are sick, no circle of 
neighbors and friends watch by their bedside 
and minister to their necessities, but the walls 
of the hospital, if on shore, receive them and 
conceal their sorrows from observation. No 
kindred follow them to the grave and erect 
the memorial stone. They are not, in the 
expressive language of Scripture, ' gathered 
unto their fathers,' but they are buried on 
the shores of foreign lands, or amid the 
everlasting snows of the pole, or in the 
abyss of ocean, slumbering in nameless 
sepulchres and mausoleums of the mighty 
deep. Like the winds that bear and the 



THE SEAMAN'S FRIEND 87 

waves that break around them, they are the 
visitors of every clime, the residents of none. 
. . . The knowledge of the community at 
large in respect to seamen is too often 
gleaned from the exaggerated descriptions of 
novelists. . . . Every man has in his heart 
home feeling. It is an old-fashioned thing. 
He drew it in with his mother's milk. He 
learned it at his father's knees. Even sailors 
are men. They did not spring from the froth 
of the sea, like Venus. They had mothers 
and fathers that loved them and prayed for 
them. It is the heart makes home. It is 
the heart makes friends in the world. The 
heart makes heaven." 

Sailors are ever among the bravest of the 
brave. Great as is the appreciation of the 
American people of the bravery of the men 
who lined up behind the guns of our war- 
ships in the great war which kept the Union 
whole, it is not half great enough. 

Neither can we overestimate their loyalty 
in all great crises of the nation's history. It 
was President Lincoln who pointed out the 
fact that in all the general defection of the 
first period of secession not a single common 
seaman proved false to his flag. 



88 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

In a prayer-meeting at the Mariners' Church 
while the war was in progress a landsman la- 
mented its effect upon the " Jackies." A man- 
of-war's man arose and said : " What is war 
to me ? What is war to my shipmates ? It 
brings no increase of peril — only another kind. 
We have always faced danger and death and 
disease. What is it to me whether danger 
comes from storms or from batteries ? I can 
kneel down between the guns and pray as well 
as in my room at the Sailors' Home." 

For patriotism and bravery wherever shown, 
Mr. Kellogg had the greatest admiration. 
Besides the large number of landsmen con- 
nected with his church who entered the service, 
over two hundred of the inmates of the Sailors' 
Home joined the army and more than six hun- 
dred the navy during the war. With many 
of these, Mr. Kellogg kept in touch through 
frequent correspondence, and looked after 
their personal needs. He loved them all. He 
often sent necessities and delicacies to his 
" boys " at the front. In one of the early bat- 
tles, 1 one of the young men of whom mention 
has been made as receiving arms at his hands 
in a Sunday evening prayer-meeting was 

1 Here, again, the reference is to Mr. Kimball. — W. B. M. 



THE SEAM AW 8 FRIEND 89 

wounded. He at once visited the hospital to 
which the young man had been taken, secured 
a furlough for him, provided him liberally 
with necessities, brought him to Boston, and 
sent him to his home in Maine for a visit to 
his father and mother. 

The results of Mr. Kellogg' s great work for 
seamen were often not apparent. His sailor 
parishioners were scattered throughout the 
world. In speaking of this, he once said : " If 
a person on shore is converted, it immediately 
becomes known to a church of perhaps six 
hundred members ; if he leads a devoted 
Christian life, his influence is felt by thousands. 
But these Harlan Pages of the ocean, who pray 
with messmates, speak good words to ship- 
mates in the middle watch, maintain a Christian 
life on board frigates which have been compared 
to floating hells enlivened once in a while by 
a drowning — who writes their memoirs? 
What stone records their virtues ? What 
periodical chronicles their death? They slip 
quietly to heaven unnoticed and unknown. 
Their bier is a plank across the lee gunwale, 
their mausoleum the ocean, their epitaph is 
written in water. And when the report cir- 
culates in the forecastles of different vessels, 



90 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

some old sailor, dashing a tear from his eye 
with his shirt-sleeve, exclaims to his shipmates, 
' Well, he has gone to heaven. He saved my 
soul, and he would have saved the whole ship's 
company if they had listened to him.' ' 

The visible results of Mr. Kellogg's work, 
however, were from the first encouraging. 
During the winter of 1858, the great revival 
was fully felt. Many were brought to Christ. 
The next year the interest continued, not 
only at the church and the Sailors' Home, 
but at sea. At the Home 276 signed the 
temperance pledge and 95 were converted. 
Good work was also done at the hospital 
in Chelsea. That winter word was received 
that four members of the Mariners' Church 
were holding prayer-meetings on board the 
Hartford, flagship of the squadron then in 
Chinese waters, and that a lieutenant, the fleet 
surgeon, a ship's doctor, a gunner, two mid- 
shipmen, six petty officers, and twenty-five sea- 
men had been converted. Prayer-meetings 
were then being held upon fifteen other men- 
of-war. The next year also showed good re- 
sults. In 1861, Mr. Kellogg was able to report 
seventy-four conversions at the Sailors' Home, 
fifty-five on the receiving-ship Ohio, twenty- 



THE SEAMAN'S FRIEND 91 

eight at the hospital in Chelsea, thirty-seven 
at sea, and a number at the church. Statistics 
show the conversion of 725 during his ministry 
of eleven years. 

The high esteem in which Mr. Kellogg was 
held by the other clergymen of Boston was 
well expressed in 1862 by Dr. Todd of the 
Central Church. Speaking at an annual meet- 
ing of the society from which Mr. Kellogg was 
forced to be absent by a serious attack of lung 
fever, Dr. Todd said : — 

" I regret exceedingly the absence to-day of 
one who is the life and soul of this work in 
this city, whose treasured experience, given in 
his racy way, is wont to enliven this anniver- 
sary. I regret exceedingly the cause of his 
detention. But I may take advantage of his 
absence to bear some slight testimony to the 
preciousness of the influence which he is exert- 
ing. Apart from his successes among seamen, 
for which he is eminently qualified by the 
characteristics of his nature, as well as the 
tastes of his heart, he is diffusing an untold 
influence in other spheres. I presume that 
there is not an evangelical clergyman in this 
city who cannot gratefully trace among his 
people, and especially among the young men 



92 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

of his congregation, the quickening and health- 
ful influence of the pastor of the Mariners' 
Church." 

A year later the decline in the merchant 
marine began to be seriously felt. It was said 
to be due to the sale of a large number of ves- 
sels to the English and the change in desti- 
nation of others, many going to England and 
the Continent which formerly would have 
come to Boston and New York. This diver- 
sion of commerce was believed to be due to the 
prevailing high rates of exchange. Then, of 
course, a great many of the men who had 
manned our merchant vessels had been ab- 
sorbed by the army and navy. Just before this 
decline began, a competent authority had esti- 
mated that throughout the world at least one 
hundred and forty thousand merchant vessels 
of all kinds were afloat, manned by a million 
men, and that one-third of these were under 
the flag of the United States. 

These changes in our commerce and this 
falling off in American seamen greatly les- 
sened the number of inmates at the Sailors' 
Home, and seriously weakened the Mariners' 
Church. Then, too, a new element had occu- 
pied Fort Hill and the adjacent streets. The 



THE SEAMAN'S FBIEND 93 

growth, of business was crowding people south- 
ward and westward, comfortable homes giving 
way to commercial establishments. These 
things, together with an intention which Mr. 
Kellogg had long cherished of entering upon 
a literary career, caused him to think seriously 
of resigning his position. During the summer 
of 1865 he did so, and was soon after succeeded 
by the Rev. J. M. H. Dow. 

The foregoing is but a glimpse of Elijah 
Kellogg' s work in Boston. In its entirety, 
that work is known only to God and the 
Recording Angel. Its influence was widely 
felt upon sea and land. Thousands of sailors 
upon lonely waters were made happier by it, 
and up among the hills, under the trees, at 
many a farm-house window, sad faces that 
looked out and watched for their dear ones' 
coming brightened at the remembrance that 
they had been led to Christ through the efforts 
of this seaman's friend. 

Mr. Kellogg was a saintly, lovable man, 
and but for his modesty, shunning, as he often 
did, the leading churches of the day, because 
of what he termed their " starch and formal- 
ity," he would have been named and known 
among the great preachers of his time. 



AS SEEN THROUGH A BOY'S EYES 

William Oliver Clough 

When and under what circumstances I 
made the acquaintance of the Rev. Elijah 
Kellogg I do not now recall. The place, 
however, was Boston, and I persuade myself 
that the time was the winter of 1856-1857, 
during what was mentioned in the newspapers 
of that day as the " Finney revival." I was 
then an errand boy in a jewelry store, a mem- 
ber of the Park Street Church Sunday-school 
and congregation, and spent many of my 
evenings out — for I slept in the store — at 
the rooms of the Young Men's Christian 
Association, then in Tremont Temple. It was 
probably at the last-mentioned place that Mr. 
Kellogg came into my life, and now, looking 
back over the years that have passed, I 
acknowledge that I have cause for gratitude 
that I did not resist the love and friendship 
that he generously bestowed upon me. 

94 



AS SEEN THROUGH A BOY'S EYES 95 

Those of us, his friends and admirers, who 
recall the dignified manners and solemn utter- 
ances of the good old clergyman of our grand- 
fathers' days — on whose approach to the old 
homestead we fled like a brood of frightened 
chickens — do not find in him a counterpart. 
He was like yet unlike them, and it was the 
unlikeness that attracted young people to him 
and compelled them whether they would or 
no to follow where he led. It was that he 
had been a boy — the old school clergyman 
never gave evidence of such weakness — and 
that it seemed no condescension on his part to 
be a boy again with boys, when by so being 
he could keep them out of mischief and as he 
was wont to say "headed up the stream." 
More than this he knew how to "get at 
boys." He had a purpose in it all. Many 
boys did not in my boyhood days — and I 
assume that they are the same in all genera- 
tions - — take kindly to being told that unless 
they turned over a new leaf and joined the 
church they would surely go to the devil. Mr. 
Kellogg knew this and was ever on the watch 
to discover their plans and ambitions, and, 
apart from sermons, — for he could get them 
in in the proper place, — encourage them to 



96 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

strive for success, while incidentally warning 
them of the pitfalls in their path. In a word, 
he had an intuitive knowledge of the charac- 
ter of the person upon whom he would im- 
press the better way of life, and knew just 
how much religious talk he would stand and 
still come to him with his burdens and for 
advice. His attitude always seemed to be 
that religion — as men profess it — was in a 
large degree dependent upon education in 
honesty and sincerity of purpose in the things 
that are nearest at hand, in the affairs of 
everyday life, that if the twig were but 
rightly bent, thus the tree would incline. He 
was indeed a reverend schoolmaster. 

Hardly a week passed between the date I 
have tried to fix and the time I left Boston in 
1870, when, if Mr. Kellogg was in the city, I did 
not meet him somewhere in his wanderings. 
I do not recall that I ever attended services 
at the Mariners' Church on Summer Street, 
over which he was for many years pastor, on 
a Sunday morning or afternoon. Sunday 
evening was the time. It was then that 
the larger half of the Park Street Church 
boys and girls ran away, as the annoyed dea- 
cons put it, and went to Mr. Kellogg' s meet- 



AS SEEN THROUGH A BOY'S EYES 97 

ing. No matter what the weather happened 
to be or what the attractions were at home, 
the young people into whose lives Mr. Kel- 
logg had forged his way went where he was 
to be found. They had done their duty by 
their own church, and they must do their duty 
by Father Kellogg ; and so it happened that 
year after year the Seaman's Bethel was 
crowded to overflowing on Sunday night, the 
middle of the house being reserved for Jack, 
and the wall pews for the boys and girls. In- 
cidentally, and always in the right place, the 
preacher gave us the advice that was with- 
held in social and friendly intercourse. In 
an up-to-date way of expressing it, he "got 
it all in." 

Father Kellogg, having followed the sea in 
his youth, had a good many odd ways of say- 
ing things that were pleasing to us. Here 
are some that I now recall : — 

The writer said to him one day : " The dea- 
cons at Park Street are greatly offended be- 
cause you take us away from them on Sunday 
night, and have expostulated with us." 

" That reminds me of an old couple in our 
state" ("our" is accounted for by the fact 
that the writer is a native of Gray), he replied. 



98 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

" The wife was a strapping woman of more 
than two hundred pounds and the husband 
was a little fellow of not much over one 
hundred pounds. She abused him past the 
endurance of a block. Her tongue was for- 
ever going. She gave him no rest, no peace. 
Some one said to him, ' Why don't you turn 
about and give her as good as she sends ? ' 
and he replied, ' Oh, but it amuses her and it 
doesn't hurt me any ! ' And that is how it is 
with the deacons and me. The boys and girls 
will come to the Bethel just the same." He 
was right about it. 

Father Kellogg was standing in his accus- 
tomed place one night in front of the pulpit, 
watching the ushers and showing anxiety 
through fear that sittings would not be found 
for all comers, when, after looking about, he 
pointed to one of the pews, and this is what 
he said : — 

" Six persons may be comfortably seated in 
those wall pews. There are only five in that 
pew. Why won't you take another reef in 
your mainsails, ladies, and accommodate one 
more ? " The ladies blushed and reefed. 

One night, when temperance was the theme, 
he paused, and directing his conversation to 



AS SEEN THROUGH A BOY'S EYES 99 

some boys who were whispering, remarked : 
"I sometimes wonder how it will be with 
young men who cannot behave in Boston, 
where there are so many policemen to watch 
them, when they get into that far country 
where there are no policemen. You'd better 
cast anchor, boys." 

This anecdote is on the writer. My com- 
panion was one of the young ladies of Park 
Street, and I was feeling just a bit proud of 
myself. We were on hand in time, and had 
good seats against the wall. Distress came 
upon me by reason of new and tight-fitting 
shoes. I had slipped them off and put them 
under the seat, and was as peaceful and con- 
tented as a bug in a rug. Presently the crowd 
came, and there was a demand for seats. Spy- 
ing other boys and me, this is hoAv he fixed 
us : " Here, John, Thomas, Ezra, Henry, and 
William, come this way and sit on the pulpit 
steps." All the other boys started. I kept 
my seat. I was in a fix. Then he spoke a 
second time. "Come, come, no hanging 
back!" Taking the shoes in my hand, 
I went as directed. The boys and girls 
laughed, and he comforted me by saying : 
" I sat on the pulpit steps many a time when 

fC. 



100 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

I was a boy. It didn't hurt me, and it won't 
hurt you." 

One night just before the benediction he 
said very earnestly : " I wish the congrega- 
tion would exhibit less haste to be dismissed. 
When the last verse of the hymn is being 
sung, you throw your books into the rack 
with a nervous thud that sounds like the 
' ram-cartridge ' of a regiment of raw militia. 
Kindly hold the books in your hands until 
after the benediction.*' 

On one occasion when he was talking about 
politeness as apart from selfishness, this is how 
he got back at some of us, " Now I suppose 
if you were travelling in a crowded horse-car, 
and a tired mother with a baby in her arms, 
or a feeble old man with bundles in his hands, 
got aboard, you would give up your seat even 
if you had paid for it — but I happen to know 
that there are some of your elders who won't 
do it." I never knew whom he fired that 
shot at. 

A transient man (speaking in meeting one 
night) bemoaned the fact that some of the 
tunes to which hymns were sung were theatre 
refrains, and unholy. " What ! " exclaimed 
Father Kellogg, "you wouldn't give all the 



AS SEEN THROUGH A BOY'S EYES 101 

good music to the devil, would you?" The 
stranger sat down. 

One cold, blustery day Father Kellogg came 
to the store on Milk Street where I was em- 
ployed, with a tale of sorrow. He had dis- 
covered a sick family. There was no food or 
fuel in the house, and he had no money 
in his purse. He must raise $3 immedi- 
ately. Every one contributed on the instant, 
and he obtained nearly $4. There was a 
tear in his eye when he went out, and — 
probably having in mind that some of us 
were theatre-goers or billiard-players, or some- 
thing else — he turned to me, and remarked 
aside, " Old Satan will be about $4 short to- 
night .! " 

It should not be understood from the fore- 
going that my recollection of Father Kellogg 
and my admiration for him are based on and 
began and ended with a few little anecdotes 
incidental to evening meetings at the church 
over which he was the honored pastor. I 
knew him in the broad field, the world. He 
frequently spent an hour of the evening with 
me at the store which was my only home, and 
where half the evenings in the week I was 
alone as watchman after closing hours; here 



102 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

he often related his experiences as a sailor — 
much of which was afterward woven into his 
stories — and corrected the compositions I had 
written as a student at the Mercantile Library 
Association then located on Summer Street. 
More than this, he knew most of the boys and 
young men of the association, and dropped in 
occasionally to hear them speak his declama- 
tions and to encourage them in their studies. 
Later he was wont to call at my boarding- 
place, as he did at boarding-places of other 
homeless young men in that great city, to 
look after me and make me feel that some 
one cared for me. In those years I went occa- 
sional^ with him and others to his week-day 
meetings at the Marine Hospital in Chelsea to 
" help out in the singing," — as he was pleased 
to put it, — and to more other places than it 
would be interesting to mention here. On 
most of these occasions he "stood treat" on 
soda or ice-cream somewhere on the tramp, 
and, as I now discover, was always endeavor- 
ing to keep us interested and out of reach of 
temptation. In after years and following my 
departure from Boston, I used to find him at 
the Athenaeum on Beacon Street where — 
after giving up his church duties — he spent 



AS SEEN THROUGH A BOY'S EYES 103 

most of his time when writing his books. 
These meetings were the joy and pride of my 
life, and from them I always obtained new cour- 
age to persevere in my profession. And here 
let me say that of all the boys of 1857-1870 
I know of but one who has made a misfit of 
life ; and over his misfortunes I throw, as I 
know Father Kellogg would were he still 
among us, the broadest mantle of charity. 

Of Father Kellogg as an earnest and inspired 
preacher, a consecrated man with a message 
to men, and of his greatest sermons, others 
may speak. He was a modest and unassum- 
ing man who did not recognize in himself his 
full power to move and convince men. Phys- 
ical fear stood in the way. He often ex- 
pressed himself as greatly embarrassed when 
officiating over large and fashionable congre- 
gations, and he said to me, following his mag- 
nificent discourse in a series of meetings at 
Tremont Temple, that when he approached 
the desk, his knees shook so that he feared he 
should fall in his tracks. However this may 
have been, he got control of himself before he 
had spoken twenty-five words. All of em- 
barrassment fled before the earnestness of his 
words and purpose. It was — and I speak 



104 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

with the knowledge that many others consider 
his sermon on the " Prodigal Son " his master- 
piece — one of the greatest efforts of his life. 
He realized that he was in contrast with Dr. 
Stone, Dr. Manning, Dr. Kirk, Dr. Neal, and 
others, and that he must give the best he had. 
The sermon made a deep impression upon all 
his hearers. 

It was a comparative parallel of a brook 
and the career of man in weird and forceful 
language, in imagery that was entrancing, in 
striking passages, and with the lesson every 
moment in the foreground, — man and brook 
at their sources, the place of their birth. 

Morning. He dwelt upon its beauty at 
sunrise, and the secluded depths of the forest, 
and sought the birthplace of the brook. Then 
with the child and the tiny stream he lingered 
and dwelt in graceful, dreamy thought, in 
which he compared their purity, pondered 
upon the dangers and pitfalls beyond, half 
undecided whether to venture farther or cease 
to be. Having determined that it would be 
cowardly to resist destiny, he followed the 
murmuring stream, listened to its complaints 
and made note of its troubles. It was the 
career of man. As it flowed on, and he wan- 



AS SEEN THROUGH A BOY'S EYES 105 

dered beside it, he listened to the song of 
birds, the murmuring wind, and found him- 
self in harmony with things divine. Anon, 
the scene changed, the harmony was broken, 
the temptation to recklessness was observed 
on every hand. The little brook had in- 
creased in strength and commenced its com- 
plaining. It was being bruised against 
boulders, rushed over logs and through 
chasms, over ledges, alongside of marshes and 
across the quicksands of meadows, under 
water-wheels and bridges, thrown mercilessly 
over precipices and dashed against every sub- 
stance in its path. 

Noonday. He mused with it, gathered 
admirers about it and discovered that it entered 
into partnership with other streams as men and 
women enter into the partnerships of life. He 
listened to its whispered songs by day and 
sought its harmonies by night, he sympathized 
with its fault-finding because of the impurities 
which flowed into it from cities and villages, ad- 
mired it when it became a broad expanse, and en- 
forced the lesson of man's journey through life. 

Evening. Standing on the shore of the 
ocean, the tide receding, he gazed far out 
toward the horizon, and in descriptive beauty 



106 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

I cannot reproduce, saw the river meet and 
mingle with the sea, losing its identity ; saw 
the streets of shining gold, the great white 
throne and the crown for those who are faith- 
ful unto death. 

The outline of one other of Father Kellogg's 
great sermons still lingers in my mind and 
attracts my thought. Paragraphs from it are 
discoverable in the stories he wrote late in 
life. It was prepared for the purpose of pre- 
senting the cause of the Seaman's Friend 
Society before a great convention in the 
Boston Music Hall. He was to speak to a 
cultured audience of men and women from 
all parts of the state, and in the presence of 
some of the best scholars and thinkers in his 
own profession. He felt that he would be 
criticised in comparison with other speakers, 
and was therefore determined to do himself 
and his alma mater credit, and withal present 
his cause, so as to reach the hearts and pocket- 
books of his hearers. I did not hear the 
sermon at its original delivery, but later he 
used it for the same purpose in the churches. 
I heard it at Park Street, and was so attracted 
and impressed by its beauty of language 
and eloquence when spoken by him that I 



AS SEEN THROUGH A BOY'S EYES 107 

went to the Mount Yernon Church when he 
delivered it there. This gives the impression 
it left upon my mind. 

Through the career of one sailor, learn of 
many, He pictured the child in the cradle, 
the love and hope of a doting mother; fol- 
lowed him to school, saw him develop in 
mind and muscle ; sailed cat-boats, set lobster- 
traps, and dug clams with him. He talked 
and dreamed with him about other lands and 
climes beyond the boundary of their vision, 
and entered into his hopes and ambition to 
become the master of a ship. Passing briefly 
over his coasting voyages, he portrayed him 
in port surrounded by sharks and bad women, 
and in the whirl, where if he listens and yields 
to the tempter, he becomes lost to himself and 
a sorrow to the mother who bore him. He 
spoke of his needs, of the associations that 
should environ him, the necessity for a snug 
harbor home in every port, and then, when an 
able seaman, he accompanied him on a voy- 
age to a foreign land. 

Then he presented, in vivid colors, beauti- 
ful, weird, and awful pictures of the sea such 
as no man who has not witnessed them may 
discover in the storehouse of his knowledge. 



108 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

The vessel drifts to-day in a calm; there is 
little to do on shipboard, and so, half home- 
sick, the sailor looks upon the glassy deep as 
in a mirror, and sees faces and forms of those 
he loves. Meantime, there are omens that 
indicate a coming storm, and anxiety is de- 
picted on every face. Night and the storm ! 
Then the awful picture of the raging deep ; 
the vessel climbing mountain waves and anon 
pitching into the trough of the sea ; the dark 
and ominous clouds, the angry winds, the 
mingled prayers and supplications of the 
crew ; the promises of a better life if spared 
to reach land, the wreck, the rescue, — all in 
vividness, in rapid and burning oratory that 
held a landsman as in a vice, moved him to 
tears, and blotted from his mind all else save 
the speaker and his theme. Into port, far 
from home and kindred, and the old story of 
forgetfulness of promises when in the presence 
of temptations, and, in conclusion, a masterly 
plea for pecuniary aid from those who had 
it in their hearts to better the sailor's 
environments. 

During the war of the rebellion, Father 
Kellogg' s patriotism and zeal for the cause of 
his country was of the most pronounced type. 



AS SEEN THROUGH A BOY'S EYES 109 

Whenever a regiment from Maine was due 
to march through the streets of Boston, 
whether outward or homeward bound, his 
affection for the old home and the boys of his 
state, excited him beyond self-control. He 
met the command, if informed of its coming, 
at the railroad station, crossed the city with 
it, remained close to the ranks and at every 
halt talked with and cheered the boys. He 
made speeches to several regiments, when 
reviewed on the Common, and on one occa- 
sion — I was present to greet a cousin in the 
ranks — he broke down completely, and wept 
like a child. It was pretty safe to say after 
the departure of a regiment from Maine that 
Mr. Kellogg had not a " penny to his name." 
He made speeches and offered prayers at the 
unfurling of the flag, and spoke parting words 
of affection and advice to seamen of his con- 
gregation and young men of his Sunday even- 
ing meetings, many of whom " died with their 
wounds in front." 

The last of my several visits with Father 
Kellogg at his home at North Harpswell was 
on August 5, 1899. On my journey thither, 
I talked freely with the driver of the hired 
carriage — G. W. Holden, a brother of the 



110 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

mystic tie — and said to him : u I should 
think the people of such an up-to-date place 
as this would demand a younger preacher, 
more of a society man than Mr. Kellogg.'' 
He became enthusiastic at once and replied : 
" Why, bless you, brother, the people of this 
place are all of one mind in this matter. 
Like myself they had rather hear Mr. Kellogg 
say ' amen,' than the finest sermon any 
younger minister could possibly preach. Why, 
people come from far and near to hear him, 
and every now and then he has a request 
from some of them to deliver his discourse on 
the l Prodigal Son.' It is a most remarkable 
sermon. I could hear it twice a year, and 
hunger for a third." 

But here we were at the end of our pilgrim- 
age, at the very door of his residence. It 
was nine miles from the boat-landing, half a 
mile from the main highway through a strip 
of woods, and in a romantic and secluded 
spot ; an old-fashioned, unpainted farm-house 
of the fathers, with large, high-studded rooms, 
and furnishings after the fashion of the city. 
Everything bespoke comfort. 

Mr. Kellogg met me at the door with warm 
greeting, and when he made out my identity 



AS SEEN THROUGH A BOY'S EYES 111 

through the mists of years, embraced me with 
the enthusiasm of a child, put his arms about 
my neck and kissed me upon the cheek. It 
was the same warmth and affection with 
which he greeted the old Park Street Church 
crowd of young people in good old times. 

" Come in ! come in ! " and then our 
tongues were loosed and it was a race for life, 
for my visit was necessarily to be brief, to 
see who could do the most talking. I think 
— mind you, reader, I am not positive about 
it — that he did the most of it ; at any rate 
he conjured with names of old-time compan- 
ions and friends whom I had forgotten, but 
whose faces and forms were instantly upon 
the screen before me, and spoke with tender- 
est affection of boys and girls, old men and 
matrons, whom we had known and loved, and 
who have long since paid the debt of nature. 
Oh, that the living of the good old times 
could have joined me on that pilgrimage ! 

He told me it was his purpose to proclaim 
" glad tidings " to men while life lasted ; that 
he had engaged to preach the next year ; that 
he expected to officiate on Sunday at Bowdoin 
College, and that his health was such — deaf- 
ness being his only apparent infirmity — he 



112 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

had reasonable hope of becoming a centena- 
rian. He recalled incidents innumerable with 
which I am familiar, and related with mani- 
fest pleasure that the deacons of Park Street 
undertook to put a stop to the " running 
away " of their young people on Sunday 
nights, and, with merriest twinkle of the eye, 
said, "their lectures fell on stony ground. 
Some of the young people replied that they 
were born in the Bethel, others that they 
were looking for a chance to sing, and there 
were a few — and I fear you were one of the 
number — who always turned up where the 
girls were. Anyhow, I had the crowd, and 
I loved every one in it as though he were my 
own." 

Then, in softened accent, as though he 
feared he had wronged those deacons in 
thought and spirit, he said practically this: 
" Ah, but those same deacons were good and 
true men. They were sympathetic, they were 
liberal to a fault, and I never went to one of 
them for aid in my work to return empty- 
handed. Then there was my old friend, 
Alpheus Hardy, of the Mount Vernon Church. 
I verily believe he would have turned all he 
had in the world over to me had I solicited it." 



113 

The conversation ran on and on in chang- 
ing moods. I feared that Brother Hold en and 
our lady travelling companion would begin to 
think themselves in for a half -day of steady 
waiting, and so I began to break away. This 
was the hard part of it all. He clung to me 
and put his arms about me, urged me to dis- 
miss the driver and sleep under his roof, and 
finally exacted a promise that I would come 
again next year, if in that vicinity, and tarry 
longer. Our adieus were then spoken, and he 
stood upon the porch and waved his hand in 
parting. 

All that I have here written is, as I view 
it, a eulogy on the character and career of 
Father Kellogg, and yet I may be pardoned, 
considering my long acquaintance, tender 
attachment and admiration for the man, if, 
as attorneys put it, I sum up : — 

He was one of nature's noblemen ; he was 
incapable of deceit ; he lived a life above re- 
proach. His one great purpose was to make 
himself useful to the human family. To this 
end he sought out boys who were liable to go 
astray, and it may be said in all seriousness, 
and with impressive emphasis, that he suc- 
ceeded in the mission to which he was conse- 



114 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

crated. The seed he sowed ripened in the 
lives of those in whom it was planted, and, 
granting that each in turn confers the same 
blessing upon his children, Father Kellogg's 
influence must continue on and on to future 
generations, making the world wiser and 
better because he has lived in it. His gentle 
chidings, his forgiveness of seeming neglect, 
his patience when troubles were upon him, 
his sympathy for those who were in sickness, 
sorrow, need, or any other adversity, his hope- 
fulness when in financial stress, his devotion 
to his invalid wife, his anxiety for his chil- 
dren, his unselfishness, his never failing cheer- 
fulness and steadfast faith in God, his 
submission by which he ever discovered the 
silver lining in the dark cloud, his determi- 
nation to preach the Gospel to the end of his 
days, — all, all, have lodgment in my heart ; 
and so, when I think of him, it is not as of 
one dead, but one who lives, lives in the affec- 
tions of kindred and friends, in beneficent in- 
fluence still abroad in the world, in deeds : 
not dead, not dead : — 

" There is no death, 
The stars go down to rise upon a brighter shore." 



KELLOGG THE AUTHOR 

Wilmot Brookings Mitchell 

u If the gods would give me the desire of 
my heart," exclaims Thackeray in The Round- 
about Pajjers, " I should write a story which 
boys would relish for the next few dozen of 
centuries." This is a glorious immortality 
which Thackeray desires for his boys' story. 
Generously have the gods dealt with that 
author whose writings for boys have been 
relished even a quarter of a century. 

Of the stories and declamations of Elijah 
Kellogg the past at least is secure. What 
boy reader did not relish " Good Old Times " 
and " Lion Ben " ? What schoolboy has not 
"met upon the arena every shape of man or 
beast that the broad empire of Rome could 
furnish, and yet never has lowered his arm " ? 
The schoolboy of the future will be of different 
stuff from the schoolboy of the past if, when 
declaiming to his mates on a Friday afternoon, 

115 



116 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

he does not begin in subdued tones and stand, 
like Regulus, " calm, cold, and immovable as 
the marble walls around him," and end in gut- 
tural tones and in a fine frenzy with " the 
curse of Jove is on thee — a clinging, wasting 
curse." 

"Spartacus to the Gladiators," the first of 
Mr. Kellogg' s eleven declamations, was written, 
as has already been said, 1 in 1842, for one of 
the rhetorical exercises at Andover Seminary. 
At this exercise . there was present a Phillips 
Academy boy, John Marshall Marsters. Some 
years afterward, when Marsters was to take 
part in the Boylston Prize Speaking at Har- 
vard College, he secured from Mr. Kellogg a 
copy of " Spartacus." In this, as in many 
similar competitions, it proved a prize-winner ; 
and it so won the admiration of Mr. Epes 
Sargent, one of the judges, that he first pub- 
lished it, in 1846, in his "School Reader." 
Since then no school or college speaker has 
been deemed complete unless it included 
" Spartacus to the Gladiators." 

"Regulus to the Carthaginians" Mr. Kel- 
logg wrote at Harpsweil for his friend 3 Stephen 
Abbott Holt, then a student at Bowdoin Col- 

1 See page 47. 



KELLOGG THE AUTHOR 117 

lege, who first declaimed it in the Junior Prize 
Speaking, August 25, 1845 ; and it was first 
published in 1857 in Town and Holbrook's 
Reader. Most of his other declamations were 
written for Our Young Folks, and similar 
magazines. 

As school and college declamations, these 
have seldom, if ever, been surpassed. Vivid 
in description, stirring in sentiment, alive with 
action, dramatically portraying concrete deeds 
of heroism, they are especially attractive to 
school and college boys. Nearly all of these, 
it will be noticed, deal with ancient characters 
and events. From the time Mr. Kellogg be- 
gan to prepare for college in his father's study, 
he was exceedingly fond of the ancient classics. 
He had in his library at the time of his death 
235 volumes of the classics of Greece and 
Rome. Well versed in Greek and Roman 
history and mythology, he could fittingly ex- 
tol the patriotism of Leonidas and Decius; 
bewail the woes of the Roman debtor ; incite 
the gladiators to revolt; and appeal to the 
Roman legions, or curse the Carthaginians 
through the mouth of Icilius or Regulus. 

With the exception of a few bits of verse 
written while he was an undergraduate and 



118 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

printed in the college paper, TJie Bowdoin 
Portfolio, " Spartacus " was the first of Mr. 
Kellogg' s writings to be published. During 
the twenty-three years between 1843, when 
he became pastor of the church at Harpswell, 
Maine, and 1866, when he resigned as pastor 
of the Mariners' Church in Boston, he wrote 
very little that was printed : " Regulus," an 
ode for the celebration of Bowdoin' s semi- 
centennial in 1852, and a sermon, " The 
Strength and Beauty of the Sanctuary," 
preached at the dedication of the Congrega- 
tion Chapel, St. Lawrence Street, Portland, 
Maine, in 1858. After 1866, after Mr. Kel- 
logg was more than fifty years old, came that 
rather remarkable period of story-writing. 
Uncommon is it for a story-writer not to begin 
his career until after he has lived two score 
years and ten. That Mr. Kellogg could tell a 
tale, however, in a way to interest boys, his col- 
lege mates discovered during his undergrad- 
uate days ; for those well acquainted with him 
in college, as they have recorded their recol- 
lections of young Kellogg, seldom fail to 
mention that " he was very fluent in talk, 
exceedingly interesting as a conversationalist, 
and an excellent story-teller." 



KELLOGG THE AUTHOR 119 

For some time before his resignation from 
the pastorate of the Mariners' Church he had 
been thinking of trying his hand at a boys' 
story, and in January, 1867, the first chapter 
of his first story was printed in Our Young 
Folks, a magazine published in Boston by 
Ticknor and Fields. This story, " Good Old 
Times," at once became popular with the young 
readers of this magazine. It is one of the best 
stories that Mr. Kellogg ever wrote. It is 
largely a narrative of facts — the story of Hugh 
and Elizabeth McLellan, the great-grandfather 
and great-grandmother of Elijah Kellogg, in 
their straggle at the beginning of the eight- 
eenth century to cut a home for themselves 
out of the forest wilderness of Narragansett 
No. 7, where the town of Gorham, Maine, now 
is. Of Scotch-Irish descent, young, brave, and 
resolute, " strong of limb, strong in faith, strong 
in God," this couple left their home in the 
north of Ireland to escape persecution, poverty, 
and famine. They braved the terrors of the 
sea and the savages to found a home in the 
new country. Accustomed as they had been 
in Ireland to regard a landowner as the most 
fortunate of men, they deemed it a rare privi- 
lege to secure land in Narragansett No. 7, by 



120 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

paying "but little money and the balance 
in blood and risk and hardship." They gladly 
dared the privations of a savage wilderness to 
obtain some soil they could call their own. 

Little wonder is it that the story of how 
they did this proves of interest to the boys of 
New England; it is the story of what their 
own grandfathers and great-grandfathers en- 
dured, enjoyed, and achieved. Here, to be 
sure, they read of no fairyland peopled with 
elves and sprites, with ogres and goblins ; 
here is no fairy godmother with glass slippers 
and pumpkin coaches, but a land of flesh-and- 
blood men and women, of real boys and girls, 
of Indians with war-whoops, and tomahawks, 
and scalping-knives — all true, but all en- 
chanted by the wand of the story-teller. 
What better fun for the boy reader than to 
join this resolute family as they set out from 
Portland, and go with them into the primeval 
forest ; Elizabeth on horseback with a babe in 
her arms leading the way, little ten-year-old 
Billy just behind driving the cow, and Hugh 
with a pack on his back, a musket slung across 
his shoulders, and another child in his arms, 
acting as rear-guard. Here in the woods were 
hard work, peril, and poverty ; but here, too, 



KELLOGG THE AUTHOR 121 

were all kinds of interesting things for a boy 
to see and do. To help build the log house, 
shingle it with hemlock bark, and stuff the 
chinks with clay and brush ; to see Hugh make 
the big " drives " and prepare for the " burn," 
an exciting and important event in the 
making of a forest home; to watch the fire 
as it rushed through the clearing, and to lie 
in wait, gun in hand, near the woods and 
watch the "raccoons, woodchucks, rabbits, 
skunks, porcupines, partridges, foxes, and field 
mice ' on the clean jump/ all running for dear 
life to gain the shelter of the forest, while a 
great gray wolf, which had been taking a 
nap beneath the fallen trees, brought up the 
rear " — this was rare sport. To wear leg- 
gings and breeches of moosehide ; to gather 
spruce gum and maple sap ; on moonlight 
nights to shoot the coons that were stealing 
the corn ; to see the men cut and haul the 
masts, those immense trees upon which the 
king's commissioner had put the broad arrow, 
those trees so large that upon the stump of 
one of the largest, so said Grannie Warren, 
a yoke of oxen could turn without stepping 
off — this was fun indeed for little Billy. 
What boy, as he reads the story, does not 



122 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

wish that he were the son of a pioneer, even 
if the corn and meat did now and then get so 
scarce that the McLellans were obliged to dine 
upon hazelnuts, boiled beech leaves, and lily 
roots. In those good old times, men and boys 
were not forced to betake themselves to tents 
and camps to get away from our " modern 
conveniences," to test their resourcefulness 
and ingenuity in devising ways and means to 
secure food and shelter. From the boy's point 
of view that pioneer life was one long, glorious 
vacation of " camping out." 

And then there were the Indians, who, 
whatever else they did, kept the life of that 
day from becoming tame and commonplace. 
They furnished, when friendly, no end of en- 
tertainment for the youngsters. What fun 
the boys had playing beaver in Weeks's brook, 
and how delicious the venison was when 
roasted by old Molly the squaw ! Under the 
instruction of friendly Indians, Billy learned 
to give the war-whoop, to hurl the tomahawk, 
and to acquire great skill with the bow. If 
he could not, like Eobin Hood, cleave a willow 
wand at a hundred yards, he could " knock a 
bumblebee off a thistle at forty." And when 
Billy was fast coming to man's estate, the 



KELLOGG THE AUTHOR 123 

Indians, instigated by the French, dug up the 
hatchet that had been buried for nineteen 
years ; then there was a call for all the cool- 
ness, cunning, and heroism that this pioneer 
life had developed in boy or man ; then Beaver, 
as the Indians called Billy, and his savage 
playmate, Leaping Panther, were compelled 
to pit against each other their prowess and 
cunning. Narragansett No. 7, right in the 
Indians' trail, was the scene of many an en- 
counter, often bloody and disastrous in those 
days, but more exciting than a Captain Kidd 
expedition when looked back upon through 
the eyes of the twentieth-century boy. Driv- 
ing the oxen, with a gun resting on the top 
of the yoke, planting and reaping and every 
moment expecting to hear the war-whoop, 
creeping serpent-like through the grass and 
stealing noiselessly under an overhanging bank 
in order to discover an Indian ambush — the 
story of all this arouses the heroic in a boy's 
nature. 

After "Good Old Times," from Mr. Kel- 
logg's pen the books came thick and fast, — the 
Elm Island stories, the Forest Glen, the Pleas- 
ant Cove, and the Whispering Pine series, — so 
that by 1883 there were twenty-nine in all. 



124 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

While writing these books, the author lived 
in Boston, on Pinckney Street, during the win- 
ter, often supplying neighboring pulpits, and 
spent the summer at his Harpswell home. 
His favorite workshop was the Boston Athe- 
naeum. Here he often wrote from morning 
till evening. One of his college mates has 
said : " Kellogg wmen in college was strenu- 
ous and persistent in whatever he undertook. 
I remember when he was composing a poem 
or preparing an essay, he gave his whole soul 
to it ; his demeanor showed that he was ab- 
sorbed in it and absent-minded to everything 
else, until that one thing was done." This 
power of concentration now stood him in good 
stead. Often he worked upon his stories fif- 
teen hours a day. Upon his " Sophomores of 
Radcliffe " he spent a year and a half ; but by 
making his days long and concentrating his 
thought upon the one task before him, he was 
sometimes able to turn out a book in three 
months. 

The style in which these books are written 
is not faultless. The participles are sometimes 
" dangling " or " misrelated." The uses of 
"most" and "quite," of "and which" and 
the "historical present," are not always ac- 



KELLOGG THE AUTHOR 125 

cording to the rhetorician's rules. Flaws may 
also be picked with the way some of the char- 
acters are introduced, transitions made, and 
statements repeated. But considering the 
number of stories the author wrote in these 
sixteen years, such mistakes are surprisingly 
few. Mr. Kellogg had an ear sensitive to the 
flow of a sentence and a memory in which 
words stuck. The rhythm of his prose is 
noticeably good and his vocabulary excellent. 
Well acquainted alike with farmers and sailors, 
with mechanics and students, he could put fit- 
ting words into the mouth of each. The lan- 
guage of his characters does not stultify them : 
his carpenters are not fishermen; his sailors 
are not landlubbers ; his farmers are not cari- 
catures. He knew well the " down-east" ver- 
nacular. In the use of the dialect — if such 
it may be called — of rural New England, Tim 
Longley and Isaac Murch can give points even 
to Hosea Biglow. 

All of these books are not of the same merit, 
and concerning them boys' opinions differ. 
Next to " Good Old Times," perhaps the Elm 
Island and the Pleasant Cove stories are most 
after a boy's heart. An island far enough out 
at sea so that the dwellers thereon cannot 



126 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

easily supply their wants and consequently 
have to use inventiveness and daring, is an in- 
teresting element in any story, whether it be 
" Eobinson Crusoe/' a Masterman Ready," or 
"Lion Ben." Although not a tropical land 
abounding in cocoanuts, turtles, and parrots, 
Elm Island affords abundant opportunity for 
boys' play and boys' work. "Does such an 
island really exist ? " writes a mother to the 
author. " No," he replied, " only in my own 
imagination." And yet for many boys it does 
exist. There is no need to describe Elm Island 
to the boys of New England. They have trod 
every foot of it and know its every nook and 
cranny. They know that it is six miles from 
the Maine coast, " broad off at sea," and that 
in the early days fishermen used to land there 
and make a fire on the rocks and take a cup 
of tea before going out to fish all night for 
hake. They have looked admiringly upon its 
rich coronal of spruce, fir, and hemlock, the 
large grove of elms on its southern end, and 
the big beech tree which often has in it as 
many as ten blue herons' nests at one time. 
They can tell you of its precipitous shores, 
its remarkable harbor, its beautiful cove into 
which runs the little brook where come the 



KELLOGG THE AUTHOR 127 

frostfish and smelts, and where the wild geese, 
coots, whistlers, brants, and sea-ducks galore 
come to drink. That big rock where the 
waves roar hoarsely is White Bull; and this 
smaller one, white with the foaming breakers, 
is Little Bull. 

They know that " it was a glorious sight to 
behold and one never to be forgotten in this 
world or the next, when the waves, which had 
been growing beneath the winter's gale the 
whole breadth of the Atlantic, came thunder- 
ing in on those ragged rocks, breaking thirty 
feet high, pouring through the gaps between 
them, white foam on their summits and deep 
green beneath, and — when a gleam of sun- 
shine, breaking from a ragged cloud, flashed 
along their edges — displaying for a moment 
all the colors of the rainbow. . . . And how 
solemn to listen to that awful roar, like the 
voice of Almighty God !" 

This island and the neighboring mainland 
Mr. Kellogg peopled with likable and inter- 
esting characters. Strong, good-natured Joe 
Griffin, beneath whose hat is ever hatching 
a practical joke, Uncle Isaac Murch, full of 
Indian lore, skilled in the use of tools, always 
able to look at things from a boy's point of 



128 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

view, Captain Rhines, John Rhines, Charlie 
Bell, and old Tige Rhines are dear to many a 
boy's heart. And Lion Ben, powerful, over- 
grown, agile, slow-tempered, warm-hearted 
Lion Ben ! Almost as soon could a boy forget 
Leather-Stocking as forget Lion Ben. 

Situated as was Narragansett No. 7 some 
ten miles inland, in " Good Old Times " Mr. 
Kellogg had but little to say of sailors and 
the sea. But Elm Island and its sea-loving 
people afforded him large opportunity to use 
the knowledge of ships and seamen gained 
during the three years he had sailed before 
the mast, or the twenty he had ministered to 
sailors in Harpswell and Boston. He knew 
all the pleasures which the sea and shore 
afford inventive, resourceful boys like John 
Rhines and Charlie Bell. Fishing and swim- 
ming, making kelp siphons, spearing flounders, 
shooting coot and geese, building boats and 
sailing them into the teeth of the gale — no 
author has told of these more entertain- 
ingly. Mr. Kellogg loved the sea dearly and 
knew the words and ways of sailors well. 
" Here," says a reviewer, " is an author who 
knows just what he is writing about. He 
never orders his sailors to lower the hatch 



KELLOGG THE AUTHOR 129 

over the stern or coil the keelson in the for- 
ward cabin." He liked nothing better than 
to build an "Ark" or a "Hard-Scrabble," 
load her with lumber and farm produce, man 
her with Griffins and Rhineses, a snappy crew 
of home boys, who would " scamper up the 
rigging racing with each other for the weather 
earing," and sail away to the West Indies. 
Through hurricanes, blockades, or pirates, they 
would sail with colors flying, reach their port 
in safety, sell their cargo for a handsome profit, 
and come back laden with coffee, molasses, 
and Spanish dollars to gladden the hearts of 
the dwellers on Elm Island and in Pleasant 
Cove. 

The Wolf Run stories depict characters and 
events similar to those in " Good Old Times." 
They tell of the way a handful of Scotch-Irish 
settlers in the mountain gorge of Wolf Run 
on the western frontier of Pennsylvania, about 
the middle of the eighteenth century, built 
up their homes ; and of the " fearful ordeals 
through which they passed in consequence of 
their deliberate resolve never with life to aban- 
don their homesteads won by years of toil 
from the wilderness." Here, as in " Good Old 
Times," is a scattered community of a few 



130 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

families, frugal and hardy, hating injustice 
and loving righteousness, to whom food and 
shelter of the rudest kind are luxuries, and 
life itself is often at stake. These stories are 
full of vivid pictures of frontier life, making 
the "birch" and the "dug-out/' devising in- 
genious makeshifts for tools and furniture, 
trapping the wolf and beaver, building and 
defending the stockade. Here are many en- 
livening accounts of Indian battles, ambushes, 
midnight attacks, hair-breadth escapes, and 
long, hard chases on the trail of the Mohawks 
or the Delawares. Across the pages of these 
stories walk sinewy men of oak, in moccasins, 
buckskin breeches and coonskin caps, ready 
to fight or fall, keen of eye and lithe of limb, 
skilled in forest lore, tireless on the chase, 
sagacious in finding or covering a trail, keen 
marksmen, " delicate in nothing but the touch 
of the trigger." Sam Summerford, Ned Honey- 
wood, Seth and Israel Blanchard, Bradford 
Holdness, Black Rifle, — twin brother of Coop- 
er's Long Rifle, — are characters which live 
in a boy's memory. These are stories of strong 
lights and dark shades ; but they are true to 
the life of that day, and show well " what the 
heritage of the children has cost the fathers." 



KELLOGG THE AUTHOR 131 

In the Whispering Pine stories the author 
relates the struggles, achievements and pranks 
of a group of students in Bowdoin College. 
In these books he has given us a good look 
into the lives of students in a small college in 
the first half of the nineteenth century, and 
has preserved in the amber of his story many 
Bowdoin customs. 

He pictures vividly the early Commence- 
ment, when nearly the whole District of Maine 
kept holiday. From far and near people came 
in carryalls and stages, on horseback, in packets 
and pleasure boats, to join in the college merry- 
making. Hundreds of carriages bordered the 
yard, and barns and sheds were filled with 
horses; hostlers were hurrying to and fro 
sweating and swearing, and every house was 
crammed with people. To Commencement 
came not only the beauty, wit, and wisdom of 
the district, but also those who cared little for 
art or learning. With dignified officials, sober 
matrons, and gay belles and beaux came also 
horse-jockeys, wrestlers, snake-charmers, gam- 
blers, and venders of every sort. The college 
yard was dotted with booths where were sold 
gingerbread, pies, egg-nog, long-nine cigars, 
beers small, and, alas ! too often, for good order, 



132 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

beers large. While Seniors in the church were 
discoursing on " Immortality," jockeys outside 
were driving sharp trades and over-convivial 
visitors engaging in free rights. 

In his "Sophomores of Radcliffe" Mr. 
Kellogg tells us of the Society of Olympian 
Jove, whose customs perhaps sprang partly 
from the author's imagination and partly from 
his experience. In those days the initiate 
was made to rush through the pines and ford 
the dark Acheron, and was carefully taught 
the signals of distress — signals which James 
Trafton, with work unprepared, the morning 
after his initiation, much to the merriment of 
the class, proceeded to give to the irritated pro- 
fessor by squinting at him through his hand. 

Perhaps the most interesting of the early 
Bowdoin customs described in these books 
is the " Obsequies of Calculus." This custom 
was in vogue many years, and a headstone 
can yet be seen upon the campus mark- 
ing the spot where the sacred ashes were 
consigned to dust. At the end of Junior year 
when Calculus was finished, the Junior class 
gathered in the mathematical room and there 
deposited their copies of Calculus in a coffin. 
The coffin was then borne sorrowfully to the 



KELLOGG THE AUTHOR 133 

chapel, where amid wailing and copious lach- 
rymation a touching eulogy was pronounced. 
The orator was wont to discourse of the " gi- 
gantic intellect of the deceased, his amazing 
powers of abstraction, his accuracy of expres- 
sion, his undeviating rectitude of conduct," 
his strict observance of the motto that, " The 
shortest distance between two points is a 
straight line." Then came the elegy in Latin; 
after which, amid the grief- convulsed mourners, 
the coffin was placed upon a vehicle called by 
the vulgar a dump cart, and the noble steed 
Isosceles, which " fed upon binomial theorems, 
parabolas, and differentials, and every bone of 
whose body and every hair of whose skin was 
illustrative of either acute or obtuse angles," 
drew the sacred load to its last resting-place. 
The funeral procession, consisting of the col- 
lege band, Bowdoin artillery, the eulogist and 
elegist, and the Freshman, Sophomore, and 
Junior classes, moved slowly down Park Row, 
through the principal streets of the village to 
the rear of the college yard. Here the books 
were " placed upon the funeral pyre and burned 
with sweet odors, the solemn strains of the 
funeral dirge mingling with the crackling of 
flames. 



134 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

1 Old Calculus has screwed us hard, 
Has screwed us hard and sore ; 

I would he had a worthy bard 
To sing his praises more. 

Peace to thine ashes, Calculus, 
Peace to thy much-tried shade ; 

Thy weary task is over now, 
Thy wandering ghost is laid/ 

The ashes were collected, placed in an urn, 
and enclosed in the coffin. A salute was then 
fired by the college artillery. The epitaph, 
like that upon the grave of the three hundred 
who fell at Thermopylae, was brief but full of 
meaning, having on the tablet at the head, — 

CALCULUS, 

on that at the foot, — 

— = 0" 
dy 

But the Whispering Pine books were written 
for other purposes than simply to depict the 
life of the college or to let us into the escapades 
of the students. The dictum that "all art 
must amuse " did not go far enough for Mr. 
Kellogg. With all his fun and "frolic tem- 
per" he was too much of a Puritan to make 



KELLOGG THE AUTHOR 135 

amusement the chief end of his writing. All 
of his stories were written with the avowed 
purpose of making boys more robust and gen- 
uine and manly, of giving them redder blood 
and broader chests and larger biceps, and at 
the same time making them hate gloss and 
chicanery and love straightforward, coura- 
geous, Christian dealing. So imbued was the 
author with this purpose that he wrote his 
books, as he expressed it, " while upon his 
knees." Often at first he felt that he should 
be preaching rather than writing stories ; and 
it was not until letters came to him from all 
over the country that he realized he was 
reaching more boys with his pen than he could 
possibly have reached with his voice. 

Although written with a purpose, it is no- 
ticeable that his books are not of the wishy- 
washy type. His boys are not Miss Nancies 
and plaster saints. They do not die young 
and go to heaven ; they live and make pretty 
companionable kind of men. Mr. Kellogg was 
too much of a story-teller and too strong a 
believer in truth to distort life for ethical 
purposes. 

One does not have to delve deep, however, 
to find the lessons which this author would 



136 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

teach. To college boys his advice is, choose 
your chums well. College is not simply a 
place where learning is bought and sold, where 
you pay so much money and get so much 
Greek or so much philosophy. Not all college 
lessons are in your books, neither are they all 
taught in the class-rooms. You will learn 
them on the college paths, in your sports, in 
your dormitories; and generally it is your 
chums who teach them to you. The set of 
fellows with whom you cast your lot may 
make or mar you. College ties are strong. 
The boys with whom you eat and sleep, those 
with whom you solve the difficult problems 
and pick out the tangles in Greek and Latin, 
with whom you stroll of an evening to the 
falls or a Wednesday afternoon to the shore, 
to whom you tell your future plans, your love 
affairs, and your religious doubts, whose sym- 
pathies mingle with yours " like the interlac- 
ing of green, summer foliage/' those fellows 
are going to mould your ideals and determine 
your character. 

Again, he believed that boys must not be 
afraid to lock horns with an obstacle. A 
difficult job may be their greatest blessing. 
Richardson coddled at home feels himself a 



KELLOGG THE AUTHOR 137 

weakling by the side of Morton whom difficul- 
ties have made self-reliant. William Frost, who 
begins a business career with good looks, good 
clothes, and parental influence, returns to his 
home in disgrace because he " disregards the 
claims of others, esteems labor drudgery, and 
expects recompense without service rendered " ; 
while Arthur Lennox, who sets out from his 
Fryeburg home barefoot and penniless, his 
only inheritance " a strong arm and a mother's 
blessing," wins success by unflinching toil. 
" Hardship," said Mr. Kellogg, a is a whole- 
some stimulant to strong natures, quickening 
slumbering energies, compelling effort, and by 
its salutary discipline reducing refractory ele- 
ments." The boy who is always dodging dif- 
ficulties will make a gingerbread man. Only 
by grappling can we gain power to achieve. 
Only by having tough junks to split can we 
learn " to strike right in the middle of the 
knot." 

The value and dignity of labor is the ever 
recurring burden of these stories. They teach 
boys to work as well as to play. Through them 
all resounds the merry music of labor. The 
ring of the axe, the crack of the whip, the 
song of the teamster, the screech of the plane, 



138 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

the ring of the anvil, the swish of the scythe, 
the chirp of the tackle, the creak of the wind- 
lass, the shout of the stevedore — all in these 
books make a happy harmony and witness 
that man's primal curse has become his choicest 
blessing. Mr. Kellogg believed with Carlyle 
that all work is divine, that to labor is to 
pray. Especially did he wish to get out of 
boys' minds the false notion that only mental 
work is honorable. He thought that often it 
is as honorable to sweat the body as to sweat 
the brain. As honorable and as necessary ; for 
he believed that it is only by keeping the lungs 
full of fresh air, and the pores open by per- 
spiration, and the limbs strong by activity, 
that a man can keep his vision from being dis- 
torted. " The essence of hoe handle, if per- 
sistently taken two hours a day," would, he 
believed, cure many diseases of the mind and 
heart. The devils of fretfulness and fault- 
finding are not always to be cast out with 
prayer and fasting. Often it requires labor in 
the fresh open air, — a good pull against the 
tide, a long ride on horseback, or an hour's 
chopping with the narrow axe. Many a dis- 
heartened preacher who now mopes in his 
study and who " takes all his texts out of 



KELLOGG THE AUTHOB 139 

Jeremiah/' would get " Sunday's harness- 
marks erased from the brain/' and preach 
glad tidings of great joy if he would only 
start the perspiration by healthful, outdoor 
exercise. Mr. Kellogg thought a boy should 
learn to work with his hands as well as with 
his brain. All wisdom, he knew well, is not 
in school and college. He appreciated the 
value of book learning ; but democrat as he was 
and well acquainted with common people, he 
knew that an illiterate Jerry Williams or an 
Uncle Tim Longley can teach scores of valu- 
able lessons to many a schoolman. The boy 
who is too lazy to do some of the practical 
duties of life, who thinks it disgraceful to 
work with his hands, can have no part or lot 
in his kingdom. His boys are always able " to 
cut their own fodder." His ideal college boy 
is Henry Morton, who is a keen debater, a 
good writer, a lover of the classics and a lover 
of nature, but who, at the same time, can hew 
straight to the line, cut the corners of many a 
farmer, and take the heart of a tree from many 
a woodsman. 

Elijah Kellogg gave to the boys of America, 
at a time when they needed them most, fresh, 
wholesome, stirring stories of out-of-door life. 



140 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

With these stories he both entertained and 
taught the boys, — entertained them so well 
that they never suspected they were being 
taught, — taught them endurance, pluck, in- 
tegrity, self-sacrifice. He stimulated them to 
effort, inspired them with a respect for labor, 
taught them to despise effeminacy, showed 
them that " the manly spirit, like Dannemora 
iron, defies the fury of the furnace, and even 
beneath the hammer gathers temper and te- 
nacity," that "pure motives, warm affections, 
trust in God, are by no means incompatible 
with the greatest enterprise and the most 
undaunted courage." Such was his work as 
an author, and it was a work worth while. 



LAST DAYS IN HARPSWELL 

AS SEEN IN LETTERS AND JOURNAL 
Wilmot Brookings Mitchell 

Mr. Kellogg accepted the call to the 
Mariners' Church in 1854, not because he 
had tired of his Harps well farm or pastorate. 
They were as dear to him as ever. But 
fitted by nature and by experience to work 
among sailors, he saw in the Boston pas- 
torate increased opportunities for doing good. 
Doubtless, too, financial considerations had 
their weight in this decision ; for he had been 
unable to pay for his farm, and he hoped 
from the larger salary he would receive at 
the Mariners' Church to save money enough 
to cancel that debt. While he was in Boston, 
he did not sever his connection with his 
Harpswell parish. Each summer he spent 
some time on his farm and preached a Sunday 
or two at the church. And now and then 

141 



142 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

these people would see him in the winter, 
when some special errand of love or of 
business called him hither. At such times 
they were reminded that the city was not 
spoiling their minister, but that he was the 
same unique, unselfish, fearless man. 

On one November, for example, he appeared 
at "Uncle" William Alexander's with two 
sailors. These men, who had been dissipated, 
he had persuaded to sign the pledge. He 
feared, however, that if they went off to sea 
at once, they would forget their good reso- 
lutions and fall back into their old ways 
of drinking. They tried to get work in 
Boston and failed. At length they said if 
they only had a boat, they could fish for a 
living. Mr. Kellogg thought of his own 
twenty-five-foot boat, and at once they set out 
for Harpswell to get it. The morning after 
their arrival a northeast wind was blowing a 
gale, kicking up a rough sea. Mr. Kellogg 
doubted the feasibility of starting for Boston 
in such a gale. Whereupon the sailors 
questioned his courage ! They did not know 
their man. "Don't dare to, eh? We'll see 
who dares." Quickly making ready, he set 
out in his little boat, while his old neighbors, 



LAST DAYS IN HARP SWELL 143 

knowing his absence of caution or of fear, 
prophesied disaster. By the time the boat was 
off Cape Elizabeth, the old sailors were beg- 
ging their captain to make harbor. But no; 
they must see who dared ! When, cold and 
drenched, they reached Gloucester that even- 
ing, they had fully decided never to stump the 
sailor-preacher again. 

From 1865, when he resigned as acting 
pastor of the Mariners' Church, until 1882 
Mr. Kellogg continued to reside in Boston, 
busily engaged in writing his books and in 
preaching. During these years he supplied 
pulpits at Wellesley, Massachusetts (1867), 
Cumberland Mills, Maine (1869), Portland, 
Maine (1870), and Pigeon Cove, Massachu- 
setts (1874-1875). To the Warren Church at 
Cumberland Mills, the Second Parish Church 
at Portland, and the Congregational Church 
at New Bedford he received calls ; all of which 
he declined. 

In 1882 Mr. Kellogg came back to Harps- 
well to live for the rest of his life. He had 
worked hard in Boston and had made there 
many firm friends, but a large city was not the 
place for one who loved the smell of earth as 
well as he. He had often told his Harpswell 



144 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

friends that if he could consult only his 
own wishes, he would rather pass a winter 
in a brush camp built on the lee side of 
William Alexander's stone wall than return 
to Boston. Like many another, "he found 
himself hungry to throw aside the tame and 
trite forms of existence and to penetrate the 
harsh, true, simple things behind. His im- 
agination and his heart turned towards the 
primitive, indispensable labors on which so- 
ciety rests, — the life of the husbandman, the 
laborer, the smith, the woodman, the builder ; 
he dreamed the old enchanted dream of living 
with nature." 

Though glad to return, Mr. Kellogg came 
back to his first parish a poor man. His 
books had made his name known throughout 
the United States, but fame and the conscious- 
ness of having done much good were his only 
remaining proceeds from years of writing. 
By the fire of 1872, and the consequent fail- 
ure of his publishers, he had lost money that 
he could ill afford to lose. Pressed for funds, 
he had even been obliged to sell all his copy- 
rights, with one exception — that of "Good 
Old Times." He came back to his Harpswell 
home in debt, his farm run down, blindness 



LAST DAYS IN HARPSWELL 145 

threatening his wife, deafness and old age 
beginning to creep upon him. But his old 
grit and courage were still left ; and he found 
his Harpswell friends unchanged, they and 
their children eager to welcome him back and 
to help him in every way they could. As 
General Chamberlain so well shows in the 
next chapter, he went to work with a will 
to do his best, — farming, preaching, going 
wherever duty called on errands of charity 
and consolation. 

These were undoubtedly hard years. His 
struggle with debt was often embarrassing; 
his growing deafness caused him anxiety ; and 
in 1890 the death of her who had been his 
companion and counsellor for more than forty 
years bowed him in grief. His son and daugh- 
ter besought him to come and make his home 
with them. But that was not his way. He 
must stay in Harpswell and do his work. 

Between 1883 and 1889 Mr. Kellogg preached 
in the neighboring town of Topsham, driving 
up Saturday afternoon and returning Monday 
morning. In 1889 he came back to his old 
pulpit, and there, in the church that had been 
built for him, he continued to preach, until he 
died, on March 17, 1901, with this message to 



146 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

Journal his faithful flock upon his lips, " I want to send 
my love to all these people." 

As one reads the journal which Mr. Kellogg 
kept during these years of struggle, "the years/' 
as he called them, " of the right hand of the 
Most High," one feels that out of the struggle 
came a character which ease and plenty could 
not have given him. His boyish enthusiasm, 
his ready wit, his fun and humor, are all 
here; and here, too, is the faith of one who 
walked as seeing the Invisible. He indeed 
proved the promise, " To him that overcometh 
will I give to eat of the hidden manna." 

His abounding gratitude, his childlike faith, 
his willingness to put his hand in God's and be 
led of Him, his love for his people, and the way 
prayer and deed were beautifully intermingled 
in his life, may be seen on every page that he 
wrote during these last years. 

May 29, 1882. I have kept the day as a day of fasting and 
prayer. I have been called by the church to 
go to Harpswell. I dare not refuse to go ; at 
the same time I do not see how I can go. . . . 
I have this day endeavored to cast my burden 
on the Lord, feeling that as He has sent me to 
Harpswell, He will provide me with a way of 
getting there and enable me to do my necessary 



1884. 



LAST DAYS IN HABPSWELL 147 

work. And I have resolved to trace and set Journal, 
down the different steps by which I am led 
and to mark the finger of God in them all. 

I have preached half a day and the people sabbath, 
seemed to make much effort to get to meeting, ^ ' 
and seemed, I thought, very tender. 

In the evening went to see and April 2, 1884, 

had a most pleasant evening. I believe I can 
do good in that family. 

This afternoon I went to the college. Found April 17, 
a new student, Morton, who comes to meeting, 

and he invited me to his room. Saw B 

and gave him a hint about his soul. 

I had my barley on the ground and by work- June is, 
ing through the afternoon and getting to Tops- 
ham the last moment could have sowed it, but 
my conscience told me that was not in the 
spirit of the resolutions made the Sabbath 
before. Corrupt nature said, " It is duty to 
get your bread." I was enabled to say, " Cor- 
ruption, go about your business, my business 
is with God." I went to my knees, made 
preparation for the Friday night meeting, and 
was enabled by grace, on a pleasant, sunny 
afternoon at four o'clock, to turn my back 
cheerfully on my work and go to Tops- 
ham. 



1884. 



1885. 



148 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

Journal. I finished sowing barley to-day, and I knelt 

1884. ' down on the ground and prayed to God that 
as I had used my own judgment to the best 
advantage, had taken the advice of others, had 
worked diligently, and had not neglected my 
duty to Him that He would be pleased to bless 
this crop sown so late and under so many dis- 
advantages and give me from it some good 
returns. 
Nov. 26, Rose early. Prayed with my wife, provided 

for her comforts, and started for Topsham. 
About four or five inches of snow, the first of 
the season, all blown in heaps, the ground 
frozen, wind northeast by north. A cold ride. 
Got to the Baptist house in time. ... I thank 
God I have done my duty. I have since com- 
ing home prayed for Harpswell and have been 
to the old willows and to the rock in the field 
and thanked God. Oh, my God, I thank Thee 
that I have for the first time since my mother 
died eaten a Thanksgiving dinner in this 
house, and the first time since I was married, 
all the intervening winters being spent in 
Boston and Thanksgiving observed in a hired 
house. I ate Thanksgiving in this room with 
my blessed mother for whom I built this house, 
to provide a happy home for her in her old age, 



LAST DAYS IN HARP SWELL 149 

in November, 1849, thirty-six years ago, and Journal, 
have never eaten a Thanksgiving dinner here 
with my wife till to-day, though we have been 
married thirty-one years ; and never with my 
children who were born in Boston where we 
have resided since our marriage with the ex- 
ception of the summers spent here. But I 
have never formed any attachment to Boston. 
Here is my home. I cut the greater part of 
the timber of this house with my own hands, 
had a hard struggle to build it, and a harder to 
keep it. I thank God this night I am in it 
once more. God give me a grateful heart. 

I have been wont to kneel at the threshold Nov. 27, 
when I went out in the morning for the first 
time. It seems natural, loving, and right in 
every way to ask God's blessing the first thing 
before touching the world's work, and when 
I do it, the day's efforts always seem success- 
ful. 

God in great mercy has relieved me of my Nov. 29, 
cold and given me an exchange at Harpswell, 
so that I preached to my old people. I have 
had a fire in my study, read my mother's 
Bible, visited the old willows, the rock, the old 
maple, the Skolfield barn, the burnt tree, all 
my old praying spots, and read over the 



150 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

journal. " record of the years of the right hand of the 

Most High." 
May 19, Went to the old pine, read the Word at the 

1886 

foot of it, and prayed for wisdom. It did me 
good. My heart warmed to the spot. Went 
to Knowlton ; he was very kind, left his re- 
citations, and got me the book I wanted. 
July 4, 1886. Rose at six-thirty. Prayed and gave thanks. 
I strove to put myself into the hand of God. 
Mr. Little came for me in a chaise. We went 
to my father's old church where I prayed and 
pronounced the benediction. At two-thirty we 
went to the city hall. About two thousand 
people were there. I spoke twenty-one minutes 
to the apparent satisfaction of those who lis- 
tened and those who brought me here, and 
the friends and benefactors who have stood by 
me in my trouble. I call upon my soul and 
all that is within me to bless the holy name 
of God who has turned this thing I so dreaded 
into an ovation, and has given me strength, 
patience, and perseverance to prepare for it 
under the pressure of work and still not 
neglect anything. ... I thank God that in 
this city where I was born, where my father 
preached so many years, I have received from 
the city authorities so much respect, they 



LAST DAYS IN HARP SWELL 151 

sending a carriage for my wife and me, honor- Journal, 
ing me as his son, and fulfiling the promise 
of a covenant-keeping God, who declares that 
He will show mercy unto those that love Him 
even unto the third and fourth generations. 
I cannot express my feelings of gratitude that 
I who so tried him and my mother have been 
made by God the means of honoring their 
memory. 

Rose early. Prayed and gave thanks. A July 6, 1886. 
carriage was sent to take my wife and me to 
the city hall to listen to the oration by 
Hon. Thomas B. Reed. I was given a seat 
beside him. From there we went to a clam 
bake on Long Island, and there I met and 
had much talk with Phillips Brooks. In the 
evening we went to the last meeting, which 
consisted in a general talk on reminiscences. 
Thus has closed this Portland centennial. I 
have here received the most kindly attention, 
not only from religious people, but from the 
civil authorities; have been introduced to a 
great many people who have read my books 
and who have spoken " Spartacus," Phillips 
Brooks among the rest. I now humbly thank 
God and ask Him to keep me. . . . Went 
to see Mr. Ezra Carter; he is confined to his 



152 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

journal. bed. He was very glad to see me. There 
was not time to see him and go to my parents' 
graves where I wanted to thank God for the 
manner in which my father's name had been 
honored in me. But Ezra Carter has been 
my friend for years. He helped me put my 
father in his coffin, and was for years his 
friend, and therefore, as I could not do both, 
I thought it would be more acceptable to God 
to comfort the living than to pray at the 
grave of the dead. 

Oct. 19, 1886. Oh, how great is the goodness of God to me ! 
I have been to-day keeping thanksgiving in 
my closet and in the sanctuary ; though hav- 
ing extra duties, I have found much time to 
pour out my soul in thanksgiving to God. 
I have been looking back upon the sea of 
providential mercies and noting the most prom- 
inent ones, but oh, it is all mercies. The trials 
have brought forth mercies. I should never 
have known what God is if He had not known 
my soul in adversities. He has been around 
my path in the daytime, my couch at night. 

Nov. 7, 1886. This has been to me a most interesting, 
peaceful, and solemn Sabbath. It is with us 
a day of Sacrament. At the conference yes- 
terday I chose this subject for my remarks: 



LAST DATS IN HARP SWELL 153 

" Open thou thy mouth and I will fill it." journal. 
It touched every chord of my soul. Indeed, 
I have of all persons to open my mouth wide, 
for my necessities are very great. The pur- 
port of the whole text and context is that of 
a Being so magnificent in all His attributes, 
so infinite in His fulness, that we may, and 
are encouraged to, ask great favors. And 
on the strength of it, after looking over the 
record of God's mercies in my journal for 
the past six years, I went to the altar where I 
have administered the communion and threw 
myself upon the mercy of God and opened my 
mouth wide and asked Him for His name's 
sake through Christ to put me in a way of pay- 
ing my debts that are such a dishonor to His 
cause, as I have consecrated my labor to Him 
and work only for daily bread and to pay my 
debts. ... I also asked Him to grant me 
His Holy Spirit to interpret aright the indica- 
tions of His providence, for I surely do not 
wish to be a revelation to myself. I cannot 
judge of their bearing on the present or the 
future. His written revelations would be a 
sealed book to me without His spirit, and so 
will the unwritten of His providence. I can 
see that preparation for another year may 



154 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

Journal. have very important bearing on my stay here 
and on my attempting to write a book : two 
things which have sadly perplexed me, and 
which I am waiting and praying for the provi- 
dence of God to solve, as He has by His provi- 
dence solved so many other things and brought 
me out of so many difficulties which in pros- 
pect seemed insurmountable. I feel now glad 
that Mr. Kendall did not come for me to 
preach at Bowdoinham, though I sadly needed 
the money ; for I feel that I have seen my 
Father's face, and I mean to mark the way by 
which He leads me and take every step with 
prayer. God, in mercy withhold me from at- 
tempting or even desiring to work any deliv- 
erance of my own. I now prepare for the 
evening service. ... I have just returned. 
The meeting was full of young people. I cer- 
tainly have no reason to complain of my 
audience, though they may have of me. God 
bless them. I do not dread this week so 
much as I did. God grant my first thought 
may be directed to Him. Glory to God for 
this pleasant Sabbath. 

sept. 29, Rose early, prayed, and gave thanks. Hauled 

in the forenoon all the rocks required. Mr. 
Getchell finished at noon. In the afternoon 



1887 



LAST DATS IN HARP SWELL 155 

I took him to Brunswick, paid him, got my Journal, 
lime and sand, and got home by dark. I have 
knelt down beside the wall that is now fin- 
ished and humbly thanked God for doing this 
kindness to me, for He has done it. Blessed 
be God for the mercies of this day. 

Rose early. Prayed at the hearthstone and Oct. 25,1887. 
the threshold. John came. We sawed, split, 
and hauled the wood. The old house windows 
surprised him. We then prepared the horses, 
and at noon John went home. Though 
pressed with work, I felt prompted to go to 
the burnt tree and went to that and to the 
old maple and thanked God and prayed for 
little Frank. Made my fires and the company 
began to come. They poured in with full 
hands and warm hearts to the number of 
eighty or more. Surely God's dealing with 
me in most unthought-of ways. Glory to God 
for the mercies of the twenty-fifth of October. 

This has been the day of the National Fast, April 25, 

1889 

but has been more of a thanksgiving than a 
fast to me, although I have abstained from food 
and striven to humble myself before God. 

Went to the Skolfield barn, prayed, and then Nov. 25, 
with a tackle and much contrivance put my ox 
cart on the scaffold. I then took the wheels 



156 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

journal. from the axle, and stowed them and the axle- 
tree away below. It took me a long time, 
and was hard work. William and his boy 
and myself would have done it in ten minutes, 
but as they thought and said I could not do 
it, I did. If it had been twenty years ago, I 
should have got help ; but a person situated as 
I am — in debt, and having to begin life anew — 
must not show any sign of failure of strength 
or energy. I did it not for vanity but on cal- 
culation, as a duty. Especially is the sin of 
old age fatal to a minister. ... I am now 
going to treat myself to a little agricultural 
reading. 
Letter to Dr. ... I am well and can preach and work 
jeffefds of an d do all that I ever could, but I have be- 
^im ° Ct * come deaf so that I cannot do anything in a 
social meeting. . . . My people have retained 
their affection for me as strong as ever. It 
was a love match at the beginning, and so it 
has continued ; the children and grandchildren 
have followed suit. I never have regretted 
going to Harpswell, and I do not regret that 
I wrote the books; for if I have reaped 
nothing, I have abundant testimony that I 
have scattered good seed in virgin soil. . . 
I am more than glad that I learned to farm in 



LAST DAYS IN HARP SWELL 157 

my youth, and that I have all these years 
kept up my habits of labor, that I can do any 
kind of farm labor and take care of cattle, for 
otherwise I should not at this time have a 
place to put my head. 

I am writing you to-night before an old- 
time open fire, and I cut in the woods the 
fuel which feeds it. I am thankful that 
deafness is no bar to labor nor to writing. If 
it were not for the illness of my wife, I be- 
lieve I should write a book this winter. . . . 
I send you with this letter a copy of the Com- 
mencement number of the Orient, by which 
you will see that Bowdoin boys feel their oats 
and have aspired to govern themselves. May 
God bless old Jeff, and may his shadow never 
grow less. 

You may be assured it is from no lack Letter to 
of affection or sympathy with you in your 1393. June1 ' 
mishap that I have not written before, but a 
complication of circumstances, some of them of 
a very sad nature, has rendered it impossible. 
In the first place, I strained my heel cord 
either by jumping out of the wagon or by 
wearing a very tight congress boot, and had 
to limp around for about ten days, but am all 
right now. Don't you think, the second night 



158 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

it was done, just as I was going to bed, two 
men came from Bailey Island for me to attend 
a funeral the next day at two o'clock. I told 
them it was impossible as I could with greatest 
difficulty hobble to the barn. They said there 
was no minister in town but me, and if I did 
not go, the person would have to be buried 
without any service. Upon that I told them 
to go to John Randall's and tell him to come 
over in the morning, and take me to the inter- 
vale point where they must meet me with a 
boat. John came ; we rode to the point. 
John took me in his arms and put me into 
the boat. When we were across, two men, 
one on each side, led me to the house ; when 
we got to the doorstep one of them said, 
"Mr. Kellogg, do you think you will be able 
to preach ? " I replied, " Put me before the 
people, and the Lord will tell me what to 
say." The next morning my foot and leg 
were swollen to the knee, and I could not get 
on a rubber boot, but had to wear arctics. . '. . 
I am all right now, however, and carried a 
bushel of apples on my back to-day. 

I put the harness on the colt this week for 
the first time since the 10th of last August, the 
week before I was hurt, and he behaved so well 



LAST BATS IN HARPSWELL 159 

that I had to give him some sugar. I have 
cleaned him all up, combed his hair and washed 
his face, and he goes to school every day. He 
is a strapping great fellow and full of grit. 

It is a rainy evening and I take it to write Letter to 
to you. Yesterday was a most lovely day. I S. 
went to George Dunning' s to dinner. Frank's 
wife gave us a splendid dinner, — turkey, pud- 
ding, pies, and fruit, grapes and oranges. Betsy 
was quite disappointed ; she meant to have 
me, but Frank got the start of her and invited 
me about the middle of the month. I let 
Delia go home right after breakfast, and told 
her I would get my supper. I came home 
from George Dunning's about three o'clock, 
took care of the cattle and got an early sup- 
per, and had a long evening alone ; that was 
just what I wanted and was planning for. I 
never can feel that Thanksgiving Day should 
be all taken up with eating and merriment. 
I never spent a happier evening than I did 
last evening in looking over the year, and in 
praising God for what He has done for me. I 
have food, fuel, and clothing, and food for my 
cattle that have come to the barn in excellent 
order. Let us be grateful. Gladness is not 
always gratitude. 



160 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

I have been to Brunswick and preached to 
the students in Memorial Hall. I will send 
you and Mary both a notice of it. There are 
two magazines and you can exchange them. 
I feel quite happy that I have got through 
with the students. They checkmated me. I 
did not want to go and did not mean to, 
but Dr. Mason, the minister at Brunswick, 
and President Hyde wrote me and backed 
them up, and also the Brunswick people who 
gave me a good deal at the donation and 
have for several years followed suit; I had 
to give in. I was afraid I should not be 
able to see in the evening, as the hall is very 
large and I have been preaching in a small 
house for two years; but there was no trouble. 
It was a splendid light and I had the service 
all in my own hands ; no responsive readings. 
The students did the singing and gave me 
two anthems. After it was all over, I had to 
shake hands with twenty-five or thirty, and 
President Hyde said he could hear every word. 

The town has made a road to the Lookout. 
They are going to build a wharf in the spring, 
and the Mere Point boat will run there. It 
will be of no benefit. It will bring a Sunday 
boat, rum, and tramps of all kinds. 



LAST DAYS IN HABPSWELL 161 

I am glad you are having such good weather, Letter to 
and that you are enjoying yourself setting out 29? i894. 1C 
fruit trees. You can see now why it is that 
I am so much attached to this spot. I have 
been through just what you are going through 
now. I am eating the fruit of the trees I 
have planted and grafted, and am sheltered 
by them in the winter and sit under their 
shadow in the summer. Such labors attach 
us in a most singular manner to the spot we 
have improved. The trees seem almost like 
children. 

You ought to have been here to take supper Letter to 
with us last night. I got a peck of large ^95 . an ° ' 
clams. Fannie baked the most of them and 
we set to work tooth and nail. I never ate so 
many before in my life at one time. I was 
almost afraid to go to bed, but I had a good 
night's sleep and experienced no trouble. We 
have had very cold weather till the last week 
when it has been moderate. Until last Thurs- 
day I have not been to Brunswick since the 
week before Christmas. The Sundays have 
been so stormy that we could not have meet- 
ings, and I never preached my New Year's 
sermon till last Sunday which was a very 
pleasant day. 



162 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

I have before me two letters both from 
different places in New York State and from 
men who have made their mark in the world, 
who attribute their success in life to the in- 
fluence of my books. I had almost made up 
my mind to send them to you. Such letters 
do me good. I at one time used to fear that 
I had done wrong in devoting so much time 
to writing that might have been given to 
preaching the Gospel, but I have of late had 
so many letters of this kind that I feel dif- 
ferently, especially when I consider how many 
more persons a book reaches than a sermon. 

I have never been so pleasantly situated 
since my great loss in parting with your 
mother as I am now. I have food, fuel, 
raiment, and health. There has not been a 
Sabbath since I was hurt that I have not 
been able to preach, nor a single day in the 
week that I have not been able to take care 
of my cattle and do all my work. I am sure 
this is something to thank God for. It is 
wealth without riches. Is it not something 
to thank God for to have so many friends, 
so many to love you and wish you well, and 
feel that you have been able to benefit them ? 
When I looked over that assembly of a 



LAST DATS IN HARP SWELL 163 

hundred and twenty-five persons last fall at 
the donation, many of them the grandchildren 
of old friends, and when I look at Fannie 
sitting here ready to anticipate all my wants, 
and doing all in her power to make me happy, 
and think here is the grandchild of Pennell 
Alexander, one of my earliest and best friends, 
I feel that life is worth living, at least for me. 

Thirty years ago, Alcott Merriman died and Letter to 
left four young children fatherless and mother- 1395. ec * ' 
less. He was a great friend of mine, and I 
kept run of the children. Fourteen years ago 
Irving, the youngest, was taking me down to 
Potts' s, and I entered into conversation with 
him and urged him to give his heart to God. 
He received it so kindly that I began to pray 
for him and the other three boys, Alcott, John, 
and Paul Sprague, and have prayed for them 
ever since some time every day. Alcott was 
converted and is a member of my church ; 
Irving was taken very sick a few months ago. 
I went to see him and found that he had not 
forgotten the conversation fourteen years ago, 
and was then praying for himself. I became 
intensely interested in him. I wanted him to 
get well. I asked my church and many others 
to pray for him, that God would forgive his 



164 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

sins and raise him up. I went to see him 
every week. He lived almost down to Potts's 
and the going has been bad. God did not see 
fit to raise him up, but He gave him a new 
and wonderful peace of mind. I wish you a 
happy New Year. . . . 
Letter to Perhaps you recollect Mr. McKeen, the 

1896. an ' ' president of the alumni of Bowdoin College, 
who introduced me at the centennial. He 
sent The Outlook for a year and five dollars 
as a Christmas present. He is the man who 
owns Jewel's Island. It seems to me as if 
God had been with every step I have taken 
all this month. Everything I have put my 
hand to has prospered. I have my whole 
winter stock of wood under cover. Since I 
was injured I have always ridden to the 
afternoon meeting, but all this month and part 
of last I have walked. My fodder corn held 
out till the tenth of November. I have plenty 
of hay and my people seem to love me better 
than ever. I hated to part with the old 
year ; it has been a pleasant year to me. . . . 
The missionary society got so poor in the hard 
times that they gave notice that they must 
cut down twenty-five per cent the churches 
which they helped, but they did not cut me 



LAST DATS IN HARP SWELL 165 

down; was not that remarkable? Thus you 
see I have a Shepherd who watches over me. 

Though I have not written to you for a Letter to 
long time, you have seldom been out of my m^vj, Jan. 
thoughts. I never had so many engagements 25 ' 1899, 
as of late, — funerals, weddings, and letters 
that must be written. There were two per- 
sons, a brother and sister by the name of 
Chaplin from Georgetown, Massachusetts, who 
have visited here several years and have 
always been very constant at meeting. They 
were here the first Sunday in August when I 
preached in the old church where I preached 
my first sermon to the Harpswell people fifty- 
five years ago. At Christmas they sent me 
a most kind letter and a present of handker- 
chiefs and neckties. I think I will send you 
the letter that you may know what friends I 
have among the summer visitors. . . . 

George Dunning is dead. I shall miss him 
very much ; we have been near neighbors and 
friends for more than half a century. There 
were seventy-five persons that got together, 
hewed out and raised the frame of my house 
when I came here to live, and George Barnes 
and Stover Pennell are all that are left of 
them. . . . 



166 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

Deafness is a great deprivation ; it cuts me 
off from exchanging and going from home to 
preach. I go up to the college, but President 
Hyde sits beside me and keeps me from mak- 
ing blunders. I wanted to give up preaching 
three years ago, but our folks said they had 
rather hear me pronounce the benediction 
than any one else preach a whole sermon. I 
thank God for the love of my people even to 
the third generation. ... I went to Betsy's 
Thanksgiving to dinner, spent the rest of the 
day in praising God for the great measure of 
strength He has given me this winter and 
courage to face the weather and do a good 
deal of work ; also for the help He has given 
me in hard places. . . . Thus I had a most 
happy day with my Maker and Benefactor 
who has held the tangled thread of my life 
all these years, who has by His providence 
preserved me from perishing in some of those 
harebrained, presumptuous freaks into which 
my reckless nature led me. I look back upon 
it all with astonishment and with gratitude. 
I can hardly realize that I once tied up one- 
fourth of a pound of powder and the same 
quantity of saltpeter and sulphur, and because 
the fuse I had fastened to it would not ignite, 



LAST DAYS IN HABPSWELL 167 

held it in my fingers and put a fire coal to it 
with the other hand. I was fearfully burnt ; 
all the skin came off from my face, hands, and 
throat. But God had some better use for me 
when that courage was needed in His service. 
God bless you, my child ! 

I am glad that you have named the little one To daughter 
Hugh. I trust that he will grow up to inherit 26?i899. pn 
not only the name, but the virtues and quali- 
ties of the old stock. ... I am alone and 
have been for a month. It was a great trial 
to me losing Esther ; she was like a daughter 
to me and anticipated all my wants. I trust 
the good Father who has thus far provided for 
me will continue His paternal care. ... I 
have outlived a multitude of good friends and 
helpers, but the great Friend, He of whom other 
friends are the instruments, is everlasting. 

We had a great time here yesterday. We Letter to 
put off our service till eleven o'clock, which JJoo. UI 
gave time for the boat to arrive and bring a 
great crowd from Portland. Many of them 
were old friends of mine. Every one seemed 
pleased and satisfied. It would have been a 
very hard day for me, but Fannie came over 
and got dinner, and John Eandall carried me 
down, so that I had no horse to harness and 



168 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

take care of. I have lost one of the best 
friends I ever had in George Barnes. He was 
but a boy when I came here, and he helped 
me to get the timber to build my house. 

Last entry I am going to spend this evening in thanks- 

jaoTit. giving to God. 




Aunt Betsy and Uncle William Alexander, for fifty years 
nearest neighbors and dear friends of elijah kellogg. 



REMINISCENCES 

Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain 

A student coming to Bowdoin College 
in 1848 found the fame of Elijah Kellogg 
already among historic traditions, shading 
somewhat into the atmosphere of legend and 
the heroic. Wild stories of his youthful exu- 
berance, and the surprising ways he had of 
manifesting it, involved so much that was 
extreme in prowess and peril, that they led 
more to wonder than to imitation. An un- 
usual quality and combination of intellectual 
gifts, and a quaint style both of utterance 
and action, together with an openness of heart, 
and ease of manner quite peculiar to himself, 
gave him the reputation both of a genius, and 
of a queer genius. 

His writings, too, had a peculiar effect that 
set him apart from others. So much of his 
stirring power had been poured into his clas- 
sic descriptions that they were something like 

169 



170 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

storage-batteries of manly emotion. Whoever 
of the prize declaimers took " Spartacus " for 
his performance was pretty sure to take the 
prize also, whoever were the judges ; and 
it came to be deemed not quite fair for a 
contestant for the prize to make this his 
selection. 

These stories and associations connected 
with his name gave a certain glamour to the 
idea of him before his personal presence 
showed how real he was. But surely to those 
who were disposed to enjoy all the advantages 
of college life, Elijah Kellogg was far from 
being a mythical personage. Although a 
well-employed minister of a church in the 
congenial neighboring town of Harpswell, he 
found frequent occasion to visit the college ; 
and preferably, it seemed, at unappointed 
times. He did indeed, occasionally upon 
notice, address the religious societies, greatly 
to their enjoyment and spiritual edification. 
But he did not come into classrooms with 
formal introduction by the dignified professor. 
More likely his visit would be at a private 
room, and his announcement by a simple 
knock, known by its frankness and assurance, 
at any time and at any student's room he 



REMINISCENCES 171 

thought he wanted to see. This was the signal, 
not for a general clearance, as would be the 
case in certain other instances, but for the sum- 
moning of a little group of special friends and 
those ambitious to become such. This was the 
beginning of free and wide discussion along the 
unmeasured circle of the nihil hitmani alienum. 
It need not be said that these communications 
were held in a noble range, and a thoroughly 
manly and wholesome tone. Sometimes, such 
was his confidence in us, or distinct intention 
of putting us each on his own responsibility, 
as to taking easy occasion to make fools of 
ourselves, that he would get upon the recital 
of old sea stories, and perhaps touch lightly 
on his boyish pranks in college. The element 
of personal courage, strength, self-reliance, the 
despising of physical danger whether of acci- 
dent or consequence, lifted these examples out 
of the suggestion of meanness and trickery, 
which were far from him as he would have 
them far from any friend of his. Moreover, 
without the robust qualities of mind and nerve 
which characterized the original, no boy would 
be foolish enough to be led to imitation which 
would surely end in failure and ridicule. All 
that was said or intimated in these recitals 



172 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

was always with loyalty to the college and to 
the ideals of manliness. 

If these symposiums were prolonged so far 
into the night as to render inexpedient his 
questionable return to his Harpswell domicile, 
it was easy to find a bed in a college room 
for such time as there was remaining before 
morning prayers. As to that matter, at the 
house in town of more than one hard-headed 
old sea-captain there was always ready just at 
the head of the stairs, with doors unlocked, a 
room set apart for Elijah Kellogg. 

In the opinion of all he was the good genius 
of the college. The fellowship he held there 
was of a higher order than that pertaining to 
the arts and sciences; it was in the depart- 
ment of sound living and straightforwardness. 
Not only was he the friend of every student, 
but he was especially so of those who needed 
some guidance or correction inspired by sym- 
pathetic understanding and directed by prac- 
tical good sense. For the faculty he served 
an office in the disciplinary line not easily 
described, — call it adviser, mediator, mitiga- 
tor, or demonstrator of applied common sense. 
He had an idea that parents sent their boys 
to college to be made to stay there and per- 



REMINISCENCES 173 

form their duties and work out their best, 
rather than to be sent away when any little 
thing went wrong with them. Still he ad- 
mitted exceptions. 

One of the recognized degrees of punish- 
ment in those days was that of " rustication/' 
— country residence being supposed to be a 
balance or compensation for some of the ten- 
dencies of the pursuit of the fine or liberal 
arts within a college town. This was applied 
to cases not quite deserving of technical " sus- 
pension " ; but still was in fact removal from 
actual attendance on college exercise s, whether 
required or prohibited, — a forced residence at 
the home of some scholarly and judicious 
gentleman, where the attractions would be 
wholesome influences rather than dangerous 
temptations, and where the pupil might re- 
ceive instruction in the three branches of 
learning pertaining to a classical course, and 
thus be enabled to do what seemed less likely 
within college walls, — to keep up with his 
class. 

Such were the peculiar qualities of Mr. 
Kellogg that these temporary sojourns with 
him were much in fashion at that time, and, 
it is truth to say, rather sought for by those 



174 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

a little backward or wayward. Borne on the 
college books as a grade of punishment, it 
certainly was not of the vindictive, but of the 
reformatory, or rather, the sanitary character. 
In either aspect, to the delinquent " student " 
this punishment was by no means clothed with 
terrors. To take up such familiar relations 
with a man of stalwart manhood, who never 
lost his sympathy and love for youth, and had 
the faculty of putting every one at his ease 
and at his best, to say nothing of the provision 
for needful exercise by going out often with 
an able seaman in a stout Hampton boat, 
braving the terrors of the seas, and the beau- 
ties of the islands of Casco Bay, — this should 
bring a boy whose forces were not yet knit 
together in just balance, to his best of body 
and heart and mind, and to some clearness of 
purpose and steadfast resolution. 

When after three years the writer of these 
lines returned to the college as professor, Mr. 
Kellogg appeared in a new phase. The young 
wife had known him under this higher aspect 
during her girlhood association with mature 
and cultivated people. So we met now with 
a broader intellectual horizon. His opinions 
on theological, public, and political questions 



REMINISCENCES 175 

were rather conservative, but they were illu- 
minated by his warm heart. His presence 
was cheering in the home as in the college 
room. He was a good adviser on practical 
questions of life — for other people ! 

When the War of the Rebellion threatened 
the existence of the Union and some of us 
went out for its defence, we looked to see him 
take the field or the seas for the honor of the 
flag under which he had sailed. But he saw 
his duty otherwise. He was not even drawn 
by the considerations which appealed to some 
of our brightest college men, to take service 
as paymaster in the navy. With so many 
men gone forward, he thought he had a duty 
to the homes. 

After the war, when circumstances brought 
the relater of this into more responsible posi- 
tions, our acquaintance became yet closer. 
He let himself be seen at his best, and also in 
his deeper needs. He had done a great and 
honored work among the sea-faring men in 
Boston, and he had written many right-minded, 
bracing books for boys which have gone the 
world over. All, however, from a singular 
course of mishaps, brought him more fame 
than fortune. He had held on to his old 



176 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

place and church relations in Harpswell ; and 
thither he returned. His old people welcomed 
him back and gave him their hearty support. 
But with all that could be reasonably done, 
his income could not overtake his outgo. He 
was in the position of Paul in the storm, with 
four anchors out of the stern, wishing for the 
day. 

But he had a good little farm on Harpswell 
Neck, a long way off the main road but with 
a fine outlook on the bay. With some strange 
freak, — an abnormal desire for seclusion per- 
haps, — he had shut off his front view by 
planting a thick hedge of black-spruce trees, 
effectually concealing his home from the bay 
view whether from without or from within. 
This black belt, however, served to mark the 
mouth of the channel for those of us obliged 
to make port farther up the bay, or good 
anchorage ground before his door for those 
who were bound to see him even if they had 
to carry intrenchments. 

Well understanding the meaning of the old 
Antaeus fable, he thought to recover strength 
by contact with the earth. He betook himself 
to his farm. No man ever worked harder 
at this or more completely conformed to its 



BEMINISCENCES 177 

demands. City friends, of the learned pro- 
fessions, were not always considerate of his 
conditions and the pressure of his " environ- 
ment." One Saturday evening just before 
sunset, and a shower rapidly coming up, he 
was in his barn pitching off a load of hay up 
to the u great beams," with two loads more 
to get in before the shower, when the " girl " 
came running out of the house calling, " Mr. 
Kellogg, Mr. Kellogg, there's two ministers 
come, and I think they mean to stay to sup- 
per ! " Strong stories are told about his 
remarks on this occasion ; but when ques- 
tioned as to the truth of them, he would 
neither affirm nor deny. 

With his honesty and sincerity he did not 
think it necessary to change his working suit 
when he came to Brunswick for exchange of 
farm products for commodities. His classical 
friends could scarcely recognize him trudging 
through the streets accompanying — not driv- 
ing — his contemplative oxen. More easily 
recognizable was he when, homeward bound 
and fairly out of the village, he would spur 
them to a brisk trot, and enter port as suited 
him well, on the jump, with " every rag of 
canvas flying." At times, when under press- 



178 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

ure, he would drive to town with a peculiarly 
endowed colt he had raised, whose inclination 
to freedom and independent " rustication " 
seemed to have well qualified for a degree in 
the liberal arts. On one of these voyages the 
demonstrations in these directions were of such 
centrifugal order as to dislocate the normal 
relations of horse, harness, wagon, and driver, 
and even the continuity of some constituent 
parts of the respective latter three, leaving 
wreck and confusion behind, and nothing to 
get home whole but the colt. Mr. Kellogg's 
friends earnestly advised him to sell the colt ; 
but to no avail. He seemed to like the colt 
better than ever ; whether because of the 
colt's facility of " high action," or from the 
force of classical studies, applauding the victor 
in the game, or perhaps from that tenderness 
of heart that would not forsake a sinner. 

With all his love for the beautiful Birch 
Island just across the narrow channel of the 
bay, which he had begun to frequent when 
a college boy, he had an inclination — or 
what the French call a "penchant," both a 
leaning and a drawing — toward the wild 
and odd. This had led him to carry his boat 
voyages around to the east side of Harpswell, 



REMINISCENCES 179 

amidst some very bad ledges and boisterous 
seas, across to Ragged Island. This has only 
a little boat-harbor, and is so difficult of access, 
so storm-lashed and grim, that it was believed 
to have been, if not still to be, a resort for 
those who had reason to avoid the customs 
officers and agents of the courts, and not less 
implacable creditors. A curious impulse to 
know more about such a place led Mr. Kel- 
logg to make acquaintance with this weird 
fastness in the seas, and the very eccentric char- 
acter who at that time made his dwelling there. 
It is said that he even bought a half interest 
in the island. Many queer stories have come 
down from that passage in his experience, — 
chiefly of his quickness at repartee when some 
self-sufficient wight thought to pose him with 
a sea-dog witticism ; and of his skill in restor- 
ing strong, rude friendships so quickly broken 
by some fancied disregard of the extreme sen- 
sibilities of the longshoreman's personal code. 
His influence upon that class of men was won- 
derful, owing to their absolute faith in his 
integrity and absence of self-seeking. As to 
his Ragged Island proprietorship, whether he 
sold out or was sold out, the result would 
be about the same to him. It was possibly 



180 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

such business ventures as this which deep- 
ened the embarrassment in balancing his ac- 
counts. 

In the course of this varied struggle things 
came to such a pass that he made known his 
condition to some of his most intimate friends. 
His farm was heavily mortgaged, — in fact for 
about all it was worth, — and the mortgage 
note was overdue and payment rigorously 
demanded. His home was in danger, and 
he seemed quite broken up about it. In a 
very private way this payment was provided 
for, and the mortgage taken off. It was a 
day of deep revelations when this burden was 
lifted, and he returned to a home which was 
in the dispensations of both law and gospel 
his own. Nor was it any great surprise to 
hear it said that it was mortgaged again not 
long afterwards. That would be the natural 
outcome of habits he indulged in, of which a 
characteristic story may be an example. His 
self-forgetfulness was of so obvious a character 
that his neighbors saw fit to provide a fine 
new overcoat to cover one mark of this defi- 
ciency. Putting it on one cold day soon after- 
wards to drive to Brunswick, he met a poor 
fellow, gaunt and thin as to flesh or other cov- 



BEMINISCENCES 181 

ering, poking his way down the Neck to some- 
thing he called home. Plain greetings were 
exchanged, when Mr. Kellogg exclaimed rather 
than questioned, " Tom, haven't yon any better 
clothes than that ! " — "No, Parson Kellogg," 
came the apology, " I hain't got no others at 
all ! " Off came the new overcoat, with the 
Kellogg outcome, "Take this, then; you need 
it more than I do ! " throwing it over him and 
driving out of reach of the astonished man's 
protest, left to the necessity of keeping the 
garment for the present, and the possibly not 
disagreeable reflection that it would be of no 
use to try to give it back at any time. The 
absolute verity of this story in every detail 
has not been vouched for ; but the fact of its 
general acceptance among the people shows 
that it was true to nature, — that is to say, 
" Just like Elijah ! " Anyway, the story goes 
to prove his recognized character. 

All this time he was strictly keeping up his 
faithful ministry among his faithful Harps- 
well people; doing good to everybody he 
met, preaching stanch old-school sermons 
with irresistible logic, enlivened by brilliant 
flashes of wit and flights of poetry and heart- 
reaching illustration ; a familiar and welcome 



182 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

visitor in every house, holding the confidence 
and love of every home, sharing joys and 
griefs, intrusted with innermost experiences; 
smiled at in some sense or other by all who 
saw him ; respected and revered by all whom 
he knew, whether of his fold or of some other, 
or perchance without any fold, astray, and, 
but for him, lost. 

His public ministerial work knew no limit 
but that of the hours of the day. After his 
own church service it was his practice to meet 
every opportunity to speak to the people on 
neighboring shores. Not only was his boat 
seen threading the channels among the east- 
ern Harpswell Islands that made part of his 
far-outlying, conglomerate parish, but pushing 
its way across the western bays to Flying 
Point, Wolf's Neck, and Freeport, — the track 
of this life-message more kindling to the 
thought than the thrilling vision of the fu- 
neral boat-train faring to these same places 
named in Whittier's weird poem of " The Dead 
Ship of Harpswell." 

The people among whom Mr. Kellogg came 
to minister had marked and interesting char- 
acteristics. Natural advantages for seafaring 
business in all its variety had in early times 



REMINISCENCES 183 

brought to these shores settlers of a robust type. 
Among them were many who, at that period 
when minds and bodies were so astir in the 
old world and new over questions of life, reli- 
gion, and the social order, sought a change 
of place that they might find scope for their 
abounding energies and unchanging purpose. 
These were strong characters — men and 
women — strong in body, mind, and heart, 
— and, it must be said also, in political and 
religious faith. This implies originality, inde- 
pendence, diversity, — the outcome of which 
is not a tame common likeness in the elements 
of a community, but differences which when 
properly harmonized give strength to the 
social structure. These leading spirits organ- 
ized their likenesses and differences into a little 
republic, based upon integrity, and by mutual 
service tending to the common good realizing 
what was best in the ability of each. They 
prospered. Many a noble old homestead 
stands to-day on these island fronts and head- 
lands, testifying to the uses they made of this 
prosperity. These characteristics appeared in 
their descendants down to the third and fourth 
generation. 

It was the holding together of this society, 



184 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

the harmonizing of these elements, and bring- 
ing out their power for good, that made the 
inspiring and noble work for Elijah Kellogg. 
With a warm heart for all ; the quick recog- 
nition of every worthy trait of temperament 
or habit ; taking in the sorrows of others with 
sincere sympathy ; tactful in dealing with 
weakness or defect ; tolerant of differing belief 
or profession ; fearless of adverse expression or 
hostile force, — he went straightforward in his 
work. He was appreciated. Most of those 
he dealt with were in one way or another sea- 
faring men ; builders and owners, masters and 
sailors of ships ; men of wide experience, who 
had seen the world, who had endured hard- 
ships, who had well carried great responsibili- 
ties ; the women, too, accustomed to enlarging 
thoughts and sympathies. 

These were a people worthy of such a man 
as he was of them. His sound instruction 
and faithful exhortation impressed such minds. 
Strong doctrine, largely on the lines of the 
old Pilgrim faith, propounded, pondered, and 
at least respected, meets and makes such 
characters. The untiring effort to apply these 
principles in the practice of daily living, 
instilling these elements into the springs of 



REMINISCENCES 185 

action and fibre of character, inculcating the 
test of right and sense of honor for the rule of 
social intercourse and endeavor, — out of all 
this comes a mighty result in the course of 
years. For three generations in that stead- 
fast old town he stood at the gates of life. 
Birth, baptism, marriage, and the passing over 
we call death, — none of these was held quite 
acceptable to God, or blessed to the full for 
any, unless Elijah Kellogg were the usher. 
To the last days of his life, he was summoned 
from near and far by descendants of these 
families to perpetuate by this token the cove- 
nant of the inherited blessing. His influence 
is still powerful in the sterling character of 
that community, of which it is not too much 
to say that it is typical of the best American 
citizenship. 

One interesting custom kept up to the last 
was that time of all good gifts and greetings, — 
the annual " donation party," or reception, for 
Mr. Kellogg, at that home of ample welcome, 
dear " Aunt Betsy " Alexander's, his oldest 
and nearest neighbor. What gatherings were 
there ! What types of strength and beauty ! 
What harmonious contrasts and balancing of 
youth and age, of soberness and mirth, of 



186 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

brooding memories and forward-looking, un- 
tested promise ! And all owing so much of 
their worth to this one man. 

In his latter years Mr. Kellogg was more 
an object of interest than ever. The inroads 
of advancing age did not reach his mind and 
spirit. He stood up in his old church and 
gave strong sermons, — some of them quite 
likely the same as had been given to other 
generations, but equally applicable and whole- 
some now. People came long distances to see 
and hear him. Summer visitors at neighbor- 
ing resorts kept the circle of admirers undimin- 
ished and filled the church on Sundays. 

He was often sought for to go elsewhere for 
one more greeting. At the great meeting of 
the graduates at the centennial of the college, 
he was entreated to be one of the announced 
speakers. His modesty and real diffidence 
would riot allow him to assent. But, as might 
be expected, he was sought out in some of his 
old haunts within the grounds, and brought 
in by acclamation. His was the best speech 
among them all, which bore hearts away to 
the unseen bonds of fellowship and the con- 
tinuity of college life and power. 

In the very closing days of his activity — 



REMINISCENCES 187 

in the mingling of the twilight and the dawn 
— he was persuaded to address a meeting of 
friends from neighboring towns held in the 
spacious auditorium in Merrymeeting Park, by 
the riverside in Brunswick. Over against the 
solid physical force of the vast assembly he 
stood with the aspect of an already disembodied 
spirit ; but in clear tones, as of a voice from 
heaven, he delivered his message, in that 
marvellous, all-entreating discourse, " The 
Prodigal Son." Those of us who stood near, 
almost dreading lest the winged words should 
bear him away, saw by the gleam of his eye 
what joy it was to that great heart of faith, 
and hope, and love, that his last commission 
might be to point out the way by which the 
wilful, unworthy wanderer, with belated peni- 
tence, might find the Father s House. 

It does not seem quite natural to close 
these reminiscences without expressing thank- 
fulness that the last decade of years brought 
the long-cherished friendship within even 
closer bounds. With a summer home on the 
site of one of the great old shipyards came 
the good fortune of becoming one of Mr. 
Kellogg's nearest neighbors. After life's toil 
and trial, its strifes and storms and perils, we 



188 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

sat down within hailing distance on shores 
sloping toward each other, looking over quiet 
waters. It was a time of boats again; and 
their message was still of glad tidings. It 
seemed but an easy row across the mile of 
bay, with him on the other shore. Thus was 
more than renewed the old habit of hospitali- 
ties and symposiums. The dreams of youth 
had been interpreted ; its faiths tested ; its 
hopes and fears overpassed ; only its heart 
unchanged. We knew what we were talking 
about now ; and there was much to say. On 
Sundays we walked together the well-worn 
paths to his familiar church with boyish 
embrace, caring not if any thought it strange. 
Then, too, meeting at the bankside of dear 
friends departed, with his words the last of 
earth. 

Now the black spruces stand in mourning ; 
but our hearts go on with him. His boat is 
still on the sloping shore, pointing seaward ; 
so does his cherished spirit help to bear us 
over. 

Through nearly threescore years what 
blessed work was his ! And his reward is not 
wholly on high, although it will be so in the 
consummation. But here and now and in the 



BEMINISCENCES 189 

years to come is a great part of it, in living 
power in the hearts and souls of men and 
women walking worthily in this world, letting 
their light also shine to illumine the path for 
others still. Who can estimate the value, the 
power, the reach, of a work like this ? Faith- 
ful friends are earnest now to set up a monu- 
ment to mark the place of his forth-giving 
and to keep the memory of him fresh ; but 
the whole world is not too wide to look for 
the place of his power, and the memory of 
him belongs to the eternities. 



A TRIBUTE 



Abiel Holmes Wright 



[On Tuesday, March 19, 1901, funeral services for Mr. 
Kellogg were held at the Harpswell church. At these ser- 
vices Professor Henry L. Chapman officiated, and spoke to 
the Harpswell people of the work and character of their 
beloved pastor. A choir of Bowdoin College students, 
members of the Alpha Delta Phi fraternity, sang appro- 
priate hymns. On the next day services were held in the 
Second Parish church of Portland at which Rev. Abiel H. 
Wright, pastor of the St. Lawrence Street church and an 
intimate friend of Mr. Kellogg, delivered the following 
tribute, and Rev. Dr. George Lewis of South Berwick offered 
prayer. The burial was in the Western Cemetery, Portland, 
where are buried Mr. Kellogg's wife and father and mother.] 

In one of the pastoral psalms God's thought 
and feeling concerning the death of his conse- 
crated servants find this expression, "Pre- 
cious in the sight of the Lord is the death of 
His Saints." When the aged saint comes 
home from the toil and trouble of his earth- 
time services, there is joy in the heart of the 
Eternal Father. Angels rejoice when one 
sinner repenteth and the life of faith is begun 

190 



A TRIBUTE 191 

on earth, but when the sinner becomes a saint 
and the long weary trial- way is trodden 
through to its end, when, as the Lord sees, 
His servant's work is done, and he is received 
on high into the saints' everlasting rest, then 
indeed the death of His saint is precious in 
His sight. 

Fifty-seven years ago Elijah Kellogg began 
his life ministry as a preacher of the Gospel 
in the humble village of Harpswell Centre, 
where a few days past it was ended. What 
minister of Maine has ever been more widely 
known and loved by its people than was this 
saintly and revered preacher ? As a young 
man of thirty years but recently from An- 
dover Theological Seminary, he began his 
ministry among the Harpswell people ; as an 
aged saint of God, nearly eighty-eight years 
old, known and loved far and wide in our 
land, he closed that ministry in his death, 
among the people he had seen grow up from 
childhood to declining age. He had baptized 
the children of those who were his first parish- 
ioners. He had buried the parents and in 
many instances the grandparents of those who 
loved, revered, and supported him during the 
last years of his laborious ministry. 



192 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

If we ask why he remained among them, 
when called to other and more inviting fields 
of labor ; why, when this honored Second 
Parish invited him to its pastorate in the time 
of its strength and prime, he declined to leave 
the little country church of forty or fifty 
members, the answer is, because he loved the 
Harps well people. They were his first love, 
and they were his last love. Highly privi- 
leged people ! God-blessed church ! To have 
had this holy man of God living among them, 
passing by them continually, speaking God's 
truth to them, serving them in their homes, 
their fields, their boats, their sanctuary, in the 
Christ-spirit of devotion, and living out his 
rich, fruitful life of faith among them to its 
end, content and satisfied to have their love and 
gratitude, and with his dying breath speaking 
his last loving benediction upon them every 
one. It has been a beautiful life of service, 
— a noble ministry for God and humanity. 

We have often wondered what Elijah Kel- 
logg would have been had he chosen to take 
his father's pulpit, and the position and the 
prominence which it would have given him in 
our city and throughout our state. It might 
possibly have made of him a grander preacher 



A TRIBUTE 193 

than he was — and few are the preachers that 
ever came to Portland pulpits who drew larger 
or more satisfied congregations than did he ; 
it might have made of him a more influ- 
ential clergyman in our state than he was. 
But who will say he could have developed a 
grander character or won a fairer fame than 
now belong to him ? 

Elijah Kellogg was a man of deep and fer- 
vid piety — a man of prayer. There are guest 
chambers in our city where his voice has been 
heard in prayer for hours at a time, the mem- 
ory of which is a benediction. There is a 
chamber on Munjoy Hill, in which I have 
often slept, which Elijah Kellogg frequently 
occupied as the guest of one of his former 
Harpswell families. In that chamber he 
wrote parts of many of his surpassing juvenile 
stories, and there he prayed often and long. 

Being a man of prayer, it was his wish and 
will to abide where God would have him. It 
was God's will that of the fifty-eight years of 
his ministry, the Harpswell people should 
have his service nearly all of the time for 
forty-three years, and part of the time each of 
the remaining fifteen years. During the ten 
years he was minister of the Seaman's Bethel 



194 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

in Boston, as chaplain of the Seaman's Friend 
society, he spent his summer in his Harpswell 
home, preaching and ministering to the 
people. Counting out the five years of his 
Topsham pastorate, we may say that his 
connection with the church of Harpswell 
Centre was practically unbroken for fifty-three 
years, and during his pastorate in Topsham 
he continued to dwell in his Harpswell home. 
His work in Boston brought out one 
prominent characteristic of his ministry : his 
interest in and love of young men. Elijah 
Kellogg was every man's friend, but he was 
preeminently the friend and helper of young 
men. As he delighted to write books for 
boys, which helped them to become right- 
minded and true-hearted young men, so he 
aimed in preaching and by personal effort to 
reach and save young men. He did so con- 
spicuously in Boston. At the time when Dr. 
Stone was pastor of Park Street Congrega- 
tional church, Mr. Kellogg was preaching in 
the Mariners' church of that city. At that 
time Dr. Charles G. Finney was at work as a 
revivalist with Dr. Stone. Rev. Mr. Kellogg 
had been, and was then and subsequently, in 
the habit of meeting a class of young men in 



A TRIBUTE 195 

Dr. Stone's chapel. From among those young 
men he trained Christian workers and led 
them down into the slums of the North End 
to help him in his work of holding meetings 
on the wharves. 

One of those young men I knew years 
afterward, who devoted much of his spare 
time aiding Elijah Kellogg in his good work 
among the tempted classes of the North End. 
Two years later that young man came to 
Portland to live. He became a worker, then 
a member, of the St. Lawrence Street church. 
When Mr. Kellogg was back again in Harps- 
well, this young man was a prominent mer- 
chant and politician, and a well-known 
Christian worker in this city. 

At the dedication of the new St. Lawrence 
Congregational church in 1897, Mr. Kellogg 
made two memorable addresses, in one of 
which he alluded to the lamented Henry H. 
Burgess, who had died in 1893, in these 
words : " When I was preaching in Boston, 
Henry H. Burgess was the bookkeeper for a 
paint and oil firm in that city, and a member 
of the Park Street Sunday-school. I was 
preaching at that church, and saw that the 
people were sending out old men to gather 



196 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

the young men into the Sunday-school. I 
told them they would never do any good in 
that way, and asked them why they did not 
send out young men to do this work. They 
said they did not have any young men to do 
it, and I said I would get some of them for 
the purpose. I preached one sermon, and the 
first Sunday after that I walked fifteen young 
men into that Sunday-school, with Henry 
Burgess at their head, and the next Sunday 
in came twenty more, and so on, until finally 
the building was crowded to its utmost 
capacity, and we had young men to work for 
us. 

"When Henry Burgess came to Portland 
from Boston, I gave him a letter of introduc- 
tion to Dr. Carruthers. He is no longer 
here," continued the aged speaker, while tears 
of emotion coursed down his bronzed cheeks, 
" but though absent in the body, he is rejoic- 
ing here with us in the spirit." 

They loved each other, this aged minister 
and that strong young man, and they were 
helpful to each other. They have changed 
eyes and clasped hands, now, I believe, in the 
eternal home of the saints; 

It was during Mr. Kellogg's life in Boston, 



A TRIBUTE 197 

in his home on Pinckney Street, that he wrote 
his marvellous books for young people. Is 
there here man or woman, young man or 
maiden, who has not read them and received 
from them moral tone and stamina ? Perhaps 
it is true to say, and no discredit to Mr. Kel- 
logg to say, that he was more widely known 
as author than as preacher, and that he has 
probably done more for the moral health of 
American youth by his breezy, fascinating 
books than by his work as preacher and pas- 
tor. Yea, he has been a mighty preacher to 
young Americans by the eloquence of his 
industrious pen. 

It would, I believe, be difficult to find an 
author who wrote with a more definite and 
practical aim to Christianize young people 
than did Elijah Kellogg, or one who had bet- 
ter success in the attainment of his high and 
noble purpose. Mr. Kellogg possessed a gen- 
ius for that kind of literary work. That he 
had, in early years, the latent art of an accom- 
plished rhetorician was proved in his student 
days, when he wrote and declaimed " Sparta- 
cus to the Gladiators," while in Andover The- 
ological Seminary. It is well, doubtless, that 
Mr. Kellogg's literary genius was directed to 



198 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

the humbler, yet more practical and service- 
able, art of writing books for the moral and 
religious culture of the young. 

As a preacher Mr. Kellogg was great, both 
in the art of making and in the forceful 
presentation of the sermon. Rhetorical finish 
and enlivening humor were alike natural and 
easy to him. I never have heard a preacher 
who seemed more thoroughly to enjoy the 
effort of preaching, and few preachers excelled 
him in the ability to make his audience enjoy 
the sermon. How quickly could he change 
the amused interest of the congregation in the 
play of his humor into serious and solemn 
emotion by the power and pathos of his force- 
ful appeals, applying the teaching of his ser- 
mon to the conscience and the heart. 

He was a man of quick and responsive sym- 
pathies. His whole life was characterized by 
the spirit of Christian benevolence. He not 
only gave himself to his people to be ever and 
always their servant in things spiritual, but as 
truly in things temporal. He was their coun- 
sellor and helper in all their heavenly and 
earthly concerns. It was the habit of his life 
to keep a purse for the Lord, into which went 
one-tenth of all moneys received by him. 



A TRIBUTE 199 

Thus he furnished himself, systematically, 
with the means to extend aid to those whose 
sufferings appealed to his sympathies. It is 
said that he gave beyond his means, and often 
to his own embarrassment. His services as 
a preacher were in constant demand, from 
churches far and near, and he responded when 
he could. Not a few churches have been 
blessed by his labors, at different intervals, 
during his Harps well pastorate. Here in 
Portland he was greatly beloved. For nearly 
one year he was the continual supply of the 
St. Lawrence Street church, and in the 
thought of its older members he is regarded 
as one of its pastors. Portland claimed him 
as her own. He preached at Cumberland 
Mills, at Wellesley, Rockport, and New Bed- 
ford, Massachusetts, and in other places he has 
served the church of God. The Congrega- 
tional church in New Bedford extended to 
him a call, as did this Second Parish. But 
he refused all such calls, being unwilling to 
make any final severance from his beloved 
Harpswell people. 

In 1889, after the close of his Topsham 
pastorate, he resumed full pastoral care of the 
Harpswell church, which had been served by 



200 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

others during his work elsewhere, and there 
he remained until God called him home. It 
was a wonder to us all how this venerable 
man, with the infirmities of extreme old age 
creeping upon him, could still keep on preach- 
ing in his eighty-eighth year, two sermons each 
Sunday, and ministering as a pastor to his 
flock. 

His last visit to Portland was during " the 
Old Home week" in August, 1900. He 
opened the festivities of that notable week by 
preaching Sunday morning in this Second 
Parish church, upon invitation of its pastor, 
and preaching again in the evening of that 
day at Yarmouth ; returning Monday morn- 
ing to the residence of his niece in the old 
homestead of his honored father, the first 
pastor of this Second Parish church, who died 
in that historic house on Cumberland Street 
in 1842, aged eighty years. 

Elijah Kellogg married, after the age of forty, 
Hannah Pomeroy, the daughter of the Rev. 
Thaddeus Pomeroy, pastor at Gorham, Maine, 
from 1832 to 1839. Two children survive this 
union, both residing in Melrose Highlands, 
Massachusetts, Frank Gilman Kellogg and 
Mary Catherine, the wife of Mr. Harry Batchel- 



A TBIBUTE 201 

der. I was called to officiate at the funeral 
service of their mother in the Cumberland 
home referred to, and rode to the grave with 
her sorrowing husband. Returning from the 
cemetery, the aged, grief-stricken man, said, 
" Now I will return to my home to be alone 
with my God." His words have been living 
in my memory ever since. They implied that 
he was sure of finding the God of all comfort 
in that secluded and desolated home on Harps- 
well's shore. Who doubts but the God we 
love dwelt there with his aged servant, 
strengthening and supporting him in his lone- 
liness and sorrow ? 

His children desired greatly to have their 
father with them in their pleasant homes, but 
he chose to dwell among the people whom 
God gave him to serve unto the end. " I will 
die in the harness," he would say, in answer to 
their appeals. I have from the lips of his son 
the words of the last prayer he was heard to 
offer some days before his death. " I thank 
God for a Christian mother, who consecrated 
me to Christ and the Christian ministry," — 
the prayer was followed by his repeating of the 
twenty-third Psalm. . . . Just before Elijah 
Kellogg passed away from earth, he delivered 



202 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

this touching message for his Harpswell flock, 
" I want to send my love to all these people." 
Having loved his own, like his dear Lord, he 
loved them unto the end. Yesterday the 
message was delivered to them by Professor 
Chapman in his funeral discourse. The very 
last words of this venerable man of God, this 
faithful shepherd of God's people, were, " I 
am so thankful." 

Let us not attempt to interpret the words ; 
they teach us that his Christian heart was 
overflowing with gratitude to God. He was 
dying in a good old age, his children around 
him, his people near him. He was gathered 
to his fathers after a long, faithful, heroic, 
and noble life. He leaves with us a most 
precious and a most blessed memory. Our 
hearts, too, are full of gratitude to God for 
the life of Elijah Kellogg on earth. 




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DECLAMATIONS 



SPARTACUS TO THE GLADIATORS 

It had been a day of triumph in Capua. 
Lentulus, returning with victorious eagles, had 
amused the populace with the sports of the 
amphitheatre to an extent hitherto unknown 
even in that luxurious city. The shouts of 
revelry had died away ; the roar of the lion 
had ceased ; the last loiterer had retired from 
the banquet ; and the lights in the palace of 
the victor were extinguished. The moon, 
piercing the tissue of fleecy clouds, silvered 
the dewdrop on the corselet of the Roman 
sentinel, and tipped the dark waters of Vol- 
turnus with wavy, tremulous light. It was 
a night of holy calm, when the zephyr sways 
the young spring leaves, and whispers among 
the hollow reeds its dreamy music. No sound 
was heard but the last sob of some weary 
wave, telling its story to the smooth pebbles 
of the beach, and then all was still as the 
breast when the spirit has departed. 

In the deep recesses of the amphitheatre a 

205 



206 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

band of gladiators were crowded together, — 
their muscles still knotted with the agony of 
conflict, the foam upon their lips, and the 
scowl of battle yet lingering upon their brows, 
— when Spartacus, rising in the midst of that 
grim assemblage, thus addressed them : — 

" Ye call me chief, and ye do well to call 
him chief who, for twelve long years, has met 
upon the arena every shape of man or beast 
that the broad Empire of Rome could furnish, 
and has never yet lowered his arm. And if 
there be one among you who can say that, 
ever, in public fight or private brawl, my 
actions did belie my tongue, let him step 
forth and say it. If there be three in all your 
throng dare face me on the bloody sand, let 
them come on ! 

" Yet I was not always thus, a hired butcher, 
a savage chief of still more savage men. My 
father was a reverent man, who feared great 
Jupiter, and brought to the rural deities his 
offerings of fruits and flowers. He dwelt 
among the vineclad rocks and olive groves 
at the foot of Helicon. My early life ran 
quiet as the brook by which I sported. I 
was taught to prune the vine, to tend the 
flock ; and, at noon, I gathered my sheep 



DECLAMATIONS 207 

beneath the shade, and played upon the shep- 
herd's flute. I had a friend, the son of our 
neighbor ; we led our flocks to the same pas- 
ture, and shared together our rustic meal. 

" One evening, after the sheep were folded, 
and we were all seated beneath the myrtle 
that shaded our cottage, my grandsire, an old 
man, was telling of Marathon and Leuctra, 
and how, in ancient times, a little band of 
Spartans, in a defile of the mountains, with- 
stood a whole army. I did not then know 
what war meant ; but my cheeks burned, I 
knew not why ; and I clasped the knees of 
that venerable man, till my mother, parting 
the hair from off my brow, kissed my throb- 
bing temples, and bade me go to rest and 
think no more of those old tales and savage 
wars. And, methinks, if I could look on some- 
thing other than warrior's harness and the 
blinding glare of burnished steel, and hear 
some other sound than death groans and ar- 
mor clangs, could I but lay these throbbing 
temples upon the soft green turf beside my 
native brook, and let my hand hang over the 
bank into its blessed current, and feel the 
broad sweep of its waters, while the leaves 
danced over me, methinks that I could heave 



208 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

this cursed crust from off my heart and be 
again a child. Yes, a child, a child ! But 
what have I to do with thoughts like these ? 
I do forget my story. 

" That very night the Romans landed on 
our shore, and the clash of steel was heard 
within our quiet vale. I saw the breast that 
had nourished me trampled by the iron hoof of 
the war-horse ; the bleeding body of my father 
flung amid the blazing rafters of our dwelling. 
To-day I killed a man in the arena, and when 
I broke his helmet-clasps, behold ! he was my 
friend! He knew me, — smiled faintly, — 
gasped, — and died ; the same sweet smile 
that I had marked upon his face when, in 
adventurous boyhood, we scaled some lofty 
cliff to pluck the first ripe grapes, and bear 
them home in childish triumph. I told the 
praetor he was my friend, noble and brave, 
and I begged his body, that I might burn it 
upon the funeral-pile, and mourn over his 
ashes. Ay, on my knees, amid the dust and 
blood of the arena, I begged that boon, while 
all the Roman maids and matrons, and those 
holy virgins they call vestal, and the rabble, 
shouted in mockery, deeming it rare sport, for- 
sooth, to see Rome's fiercest gladiator turn pale, 



DECLAMATIONS 209 

and tremble like a very child before that piece 
of bleeding clay ; but the praetor drew back as 
if I were pollution, and sternly said : ' Let the 
carrion rot ! There are no noble men but 
Romans ! ' And he, deprived of funeral rites, 
must wander, a hapless ghost, beside the 
waters of that sluggish river, and look — and 
look — and look in vain to the bright Elysian 
Fields where dwell his ancestors and noble 
kindred. And so must you, and so must I, 
die like dogs ! 

" Rome ! Rome ! thou hast been a tender 
nurse to me ! Ay, thou hast given to that 
poor, gentle, timid shepherd-lad, who never 
knew a harsher sound than a flute-note, 
muscles of iron and a heart of flint ; taught 
him to drive the sword through rugged brass 
and plaited mail, and warm it in the marrow 
of his foe ! to gaze into the glaring eyeballs 
of the fierce Numidian lion, even as a smooth- 
cheeked boy upon a laughing girl. And he 
shall pay thee back till thy yellow Tiber is 
red as frothing wine, and in its deepest ooze 
thy lifeblood lies curdled ! 

" Ye stand here now like giants, as ye are ! 
The strength of brass as in your toughened 
sinews ; but to-morrow some Roman Adonis, 



210 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

breathing sweet odors from his curly locks, 
shall come, and with his lily fingers pat your 
brawny shoulders, and bet his sesterces upon 
your blood! Hark ! Hear ye yon lion roaring 
in. his den? 'Tis three days since he tasted 
meat ; but to-morrow he shall break his fast 
upon your flesh; and ye shall be a dainty meal 
for him. 

" If ye are brutes, then stand here like fat 
oxen waiting for the butcher's knife ; if ye 
are men, follow me ! strike down yon sentinel, 
and gain the mountain-passes, and there do 
bloody work as did your sires at old Ther- 
mopylae ! Is Sparta dead ? Is the old Grecian 
spirit frozen in your veins, that ye do crouch 
and cower like base-born slaves beneath your 
master's lash ? comrades ! warriors ! Thra- 
cians ! if we must fight, let us fight for our- 
selves ; if we must slaughter, let us slaughter 
our oppressors; if we must die, let us die 
under the open sky, by the bright waters, in 
noble, honorable battle." 



REGULUS TO THE CARTHAGINIANS 

The beams of the rising sun had gilded the 
lofty domes of Carthage, and given, with its 
rich and mellow light, a tinge of beauty even 
to the frowning ramparts of the outer harbor. 
Sheltered by the verdant shores, an hundred 
triremes were riding proudly at their anchors, 
their brazen beaks glittering in the sun, their 
streamers dancing in the morning breeze, while 
many a shattered plank and timber gave evi- 
dence of desperate conflict with the fleets of 
Rome. 

No murmur of business or of revelry arose 
from the city. The artisan had forsaken his 
shop, the judge his tribunal, the priest the 
sanctuary, and even the stern stoic had come 
forth from his retirement to mingle with the 
crowd that, anxious and agitated, were rush- 
ing toward the senate house, startled by the 
report that Regulus had returned to Car- 
thage. 

Onward, still onward, trampling each other 
211 



212 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

under foot, they rushed, furious with anger 
and eager for revenge. Fathers were there 
whose sons were groaning in Roman fetters ; 
maidens whose lovers, weak and wounded, 
were dying in the distant dungeons of Rome ; 
and gray-haired men and matrons whom 
Roman steel had left childless. 

But when the stern features of Regulus were 
seen, and his colossal form towering above the 
ambassadors who had returned with him from 
Rome ; when the news passed from lip to lip 
that the dreaded warrior, so far from advising 
the Roman senate to consent to an exchange 
of prisoners, had urged them to pursue, with 
exterminating vengeance, Carthage and the 
Carthaginians, — the multitude swayed to and 
fro like a forest beneath a tempest, and the 
rage and hate of that tumultuous throng vented 
itself in groans, and curses, and yells of ven- 
geance. But calm, cold, and immovable as the 
marble walls around him, stood Regulus the 
Roman; and he stretched out his hand over 
that frenzied crowd, with gesture as proudly 
commanding as though he still stood at the 
head of the gleaming cohorts of Rome. 

The tumult ceased ; the curse, half mut- 
tered, died upon the lip ; and so intense was 



DECLAMATIONS 213 

the silence that the clanking of the brazen 
manacles upon the wrists of the captive fell 
sharp and full upon every ear in that vast 
assembly, as he thus addressed them : — 

" Ye doubtless thought — for ye judge of 
Roman virtue by your own — that I would 
break my plighted oath, rather than, return- 
ing, brook your vengeance. I might give rea- 
sons for this, in Punic comprehension, most 
foolish act of mine. I might speak of those 
eternal principles which make death for one's 
country a pleasure, not a pain. But, by great 
Jupiter ! methinks I should debase myself to 
talk of such high things to you ; to you, expert 
in womanly inventions ; to you, well skilled 
to drive a treacherous trade with simple Afri- 
cans for ivory and gold ! If the bright blood 
that fills my veins, transmitted free from god- 
like ancestry, were like that slimy ooze which 
stagnates in your arteries, I had remained at 
home and broken my plighted oath to save my 
life. 

" I am a Roman citizen ; therefore have I 
returned, that ye might work your will upon 
this mass of flesh and bones which I esteem 
no higher than the rags that cover them. 
Here, in your capital, do I defy you. Have 



214 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

I not conquered your armies, fired your towns, 
and dragged your generals at my chariot 
wheels, since first my youthful arms could 
wield a spear ? And do you think to see me 
crouch and cower before a tamed and shat- 
tered senate? The tearing of flesh and the 
rending of sinews are but pastime compared 
with the mental agony that heaves my 
frame. 

" The moon has scarce yet waned since the 
proudest of Rome's proud matrons, the mother 
upon whose breast I slept, and whose fair 
brow so oft had bent over me before the 
noise of battle had stirred my blood, or the 
fierce toil of war nerved my sinews, did with 
the fondest memory of bygone hours entreat 
me to remain. I have seen her, who, when 
my country called me to the field, did buckle 
on my harness with trembling hands, while 
the tears fell thick and fast down the hard 
corselet scales, — I have seen her tear her gray 
locks and beat her aged breast, as on her 
knees she begged me not to return to Car- 
thage ; and all the assembled senate of Rome, 
grave and reverend men, proffered the same 
request. The puny torments which ye have 
in store to welcome me withal shall be, to 



DECLAMATIONS 215 

what I have endured, even as the murmur of 
a summer's brook to the fierce roar of angry 
surges on a rocky beach. 

"Last night, as I lay fettered in my dungeon, 
I heard a strange ominous sound ; it seemed 
like the distant march of some vast army, 
their harness clanging as they marched, when 
suddenly there stood by me Xanthippus, the 
Spartan general, by whose aid you conquered 
me, and, with a voice low as when the solemn 
wind moans through the leafless forest, he 
thus addressed me : ' Roman, I come to bid 
thee curse, with thy dying breath, this fated 
city ; know that in an evil moment, the 
Carthaginian generals, furious with rage that I 
had conquered thee, their conqueror, did basely 
murder me. And then they thought to stain 
my brightest honor. But, for this foul deed, 
the wrath of Jove shall rest upon them here 
and hereafter.' And then he vanished. 

" And now, go bring your sharpest torments. 
The woes I see impending over this guilty 
realm shall be enough to sweeten death, 
though every nerve and artery were a shoot- 
ing pang. I die ! but my death shall prove a 
proud triumph ; and, for every drop of blood 
ye from my veins do draw, your own shall 



216 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

flow in rivers. Woe to thee, Carthage ! Woe 
to the proud city of the waters ! I see thy 
nobles wailing at the feet of Roman senators ! 
thy citizens in terror ! thy ships in flames ! I 
hear the victorious shouts of Rome ! I see 
her eagles glittering on her ramparts. Proud 
city, thou art doomed ! The curse of Jove 
is on thee — a clinging, wasting curse. It 
shall not leave thy gates till hungry flames 
shall lick the fretted gold from off thy proud 
palaces, and every brook runs crimson to the 
sea." 



HANNIBAL AT THE ALTAR 

The last rays of the setting sun lingered on 
the towers of Carthage, and tinged with a 
warm flush the snowy crests of the waves that 
flung their gray foam to its very ramparts. 
Laughing maidens, bearing their pitchers from 
the fountains, assembled at the gates ; tired 
camels that all day long had borne from 
distant and tributary realms vestments of 
purple, fragrant gums, and dust of gold, 
released from their burdens, were feeding 
beneath the walls; while from the deck of 
many a galley the slave's rude song floated on 
the evening air. 

In a quiet vale, secluded, yet not distant 
from the city, beneath the shadow of a palm, 
reclines a lovely woman ; the low-voiced sum- 
mer wind, stirring the citron groves, has lulled 
her to rest. The ripe grapes from a pendent 
vine almost touch her swelling breast. The 
spray of a neighboring fountain falls in minute 
drops, like tears of pearl, on her cheek, while 

217 



218 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

a beautiful boy, tired with play, has nestled 
to her side, half hidden by her flowing 
locks. 

Hurried footsteps are heard in the distance, 
a heavy hand puts aside the branches, and 
Hamilcar, the chieftain of the Carthaginian 
armies, stands beneath the shadow of the 
palm; as he bends forward to look upon his 
slumbering wife, a ripe grape, shaken by the 
plume of his helmet from the cluster, falls 
upon the face of the sleeper, and she awakes. 
Bright tears of pride and joy glitter in her 
dark eyes, as, seated at his feet among the 
flowers, her white arm flung in careless hap- 
piness across his sinewy knees and throbbing 
in his gauntleted grasp, she gazes on the 
towering form and noble brow on which the 
stern traces of recent conflict still linger. 
Tempests have bronzed his cheek, desperate 
and bloody conflicts left their scars upon him ; 
yet is he not less dear to her than when in joy 
of youth they crowned the altars of the gods 
with flowers, sporting among the sheaves at 
harvest home. Thus she speaks : — 

" My lord, is it disaster or business of the 
State that brings you here? Your eye is 
troubled, and these iron fingers too rudely 



DECLAMATIONS 219 

press my flesh, as though your thoughts were 
dark and fraught with doubt or danger." 

" I have left the camp to make good a pur- 
pose long since known to thee, to devote with 
sacred rites this boy at the altar of Mars, and 
pledge him to eternal enmity with Rome." 

" Is this the weighty business which brings 
thee at this twilight and unaccustomed hour, 
thine armor soiled with dust, thy brow with 
sweat, in such fierce haste to pluck this fair 
child from his mother's breast, and train him 
up to slaughter? Strange that this great 
empire, so full of men and arms and fleets 
of war, should need the arm of childhood to 
protect it. Stern man, thou lovest me not." 

" Why question thus my love ? For as this 
breastplate does my heart defend, so have I 
cherished and protected thee, while in thy 
fragile beauty thou hast clung around the 
warrior's stubborn strength, even as that 
wreathing vine doth yonder citron clasp, 
adorning its protector; but little dost thou 
know, fair wife, of the affairs of nations and 
of camps. Beneath these shades where the 
cool zephyr from Trinacrian hills breathes 
through spicy groves thou hast reposed ; no 
tear has stained thy cheek except the foun- 



220 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

tain's pearly drops that glistened there when 
I thy sleep disturbed. 

" Not thus my path has lain ; too well I 
know the Roman's iron strength ; in times 
of truce and intervals of conflict I have seen 
his daily life and marked his customs well. 
Poverty, at Carthage a disgrace, he but re- 
joices in. The water of the brook to quench 
his thirst, the dry leaves for his bed, and bread 
of simplest preparation supply his wants. 
Then, as the fierce she-wolf whose dugs 
nourished his ancestors doth raven for her 
whelps, so goes he forth to plunder and to 
prey among the nations, and, for the sake of 
stealing that which stolen is not worth the 
keeping, will life and fortune set upon a cast. 
Show to a Roman senate some patch of sand 
within mid-Africa, some waste of Alpine 
rocks, white with eternal snows, where 
famished peasants watch their starving flocks 
and wrestle with the avalanche for life ; did 
Phlegethon with all his burning waves the 
wretched pittance guard, and fierce Eumeni- 
des beleaguer all the shore, yet would a 
Roman consul dare the flood) do battle with 
the lion for his sands, and slay the shivering 
goatherd for his rocks. 



DECLAMATIONS 221 

" The Romans turn their greedy eyes toward 
these fair realms ; they seek to lay in ashes 
these ancestral towers, where whatsoever piety 
reveres, memory recalls, or old affection cher- 
ishes, is garnered and bestowed, nor will they 
pause till every wave of this encircling sea, 
crimsoned with the gore of matrons, of aged 
men, and even of the laughing and unconscious 
babe, shall roll its bloody burden to the shore. 

" Most unequal is the conflict. The men 
who reared these towers and moistened with 
their blood these battlements are not ; in their 
stead has come a race of petty shopkeepers 
and sycophants, having no inner life, no 
haughty purpose or generous resolve, no 
strength to keep what their forefathers won. 
The streets are thronged with youths whose 
dainty limbs are clad in flowing and embroid- 
ered robes, whose jewelled fingers are skilful 
to touch the lyre, but not to press the war- 
horse through ranks of thronging spearmen, 
to draw the Numidian arrow to the head, 
and dip its thirsty point in hostile blood. 
The rest are veterans gray with years, and 
most unfit for service, like the shepherd's 
dog that, stiff with age and pampered with 
good living, erects his hair and shows his 



222 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

toothless jaws, making in vain a noble front 
before the gaunt and wiry wolf. 

"Our only hope is in the legions I have 
drawn from Spain, and trained in foreign 
wars to conflict. But my step, once lighter 
than the brindled tigers on the Libyan sands, 
grows heavy with weight of years and hard- 
ships. Were I to fall, armies would lack a 
leader, my country one who loves her better 
than himself, or wife, or child. But the blood 
that mantles in this boy's cheek is that of 
heroes ; thine ancestors and mine were chief- 
tains of the olden time; and when the lion 
shall breed sheep will I believe that any of 
our race and lineage can ever fail their coun- 
try in her hour of need. Therefore, despite 
thy tears, mine own affection, and his tender 
age, from off thy bosom will I take this child 
and as the lion brings his whelps afield with 
claws half-grown and trains them on the 
hunters, so will I him. It is not what we 
choose, but what our country needs, and sacred 
liberty requires, that we must do, though in 
the conflict our own heartstrings break. He 
shall be the enemy of Rome in soul and body 
and in secret thought. He shall not feed on 
dainties and sleep on Tyrian purple till he 



DECLAMATIONS 223 

becomes the object of men's sneers. The pan- 
ther's shaggy hide, the forest leaves, the dry 
bed of some mountain brook, shall be his 
couch, while on my corselet scales his cheek 
shall rest, — the soldier's iron pillow ; and 
when with growing strength and hardihood 
his bones endure the harness, behind his 
father's buckler he shall learn to fight and 
bathe his maiden sword in blood." 

At the altar of Mars, surrounded by a vast 
throng of citizens, soldiery, and chief estates 
of the realm, stands Hamilcar; his helmet 
down conceals his features from the crowd. 
On the opposite side of the altar are his wife 
and her maidens ; at his side the child. Plac- 
ing his little fingers on the yet quivering flesh 
of the victim, he said : " Hannibal, son of 
Hamilcar, swear, by this consecrated blood, 
and in the presence of that dread God of bat- 
tles on whose altar it smokes, that you will 
neither love nor make peace with any of 
Roman blood; should fortune, friends, and 
weapons fail, you will still live and die the 
inexorable enemy of Rome." 

As he paused, the clear tones of that child- 
ish voice, answering, "I swear," rose upon a 
stillness so deep that the low crackling of the 



224 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

flames that fed the altar-fires were distinctly 
audible. 

It was broken by one wild shriek of agony, 
as the frantic mother fell fainting into the 
arms of her maidens. 

The stern chieftain spake not, but, as he 
stooped to raise the child, a single tear, fall- 
ing between the bars of his helmet upon the 
upturned face of the wondering boy, told of 
the agony within. 



PERICLES TO THE PEOPLE 

Imagine yourself at Athens, among that 
strange people of feverish blood, who deify 
to-day the man they slaughtered but yester- 
day. The voice of the herald proclaims that 
Pericles is to be arraigned before the tribunal 
of the people. Borne along by the crowd, 
you enter the hall of justice. Not a sword 
rattles in its scabbard ; not a mailed foot rings 
on the marble floor; one deep, intense, omi- 
nous silence pervades that dangerous assembly, 
as Pericles, rising, thus addresses them : — 

" Ye men of Athens, I come not here to 
plead for life, though it be spent in exile ; to 
entreat for a breath, though it be drawn in 
the damps of a dungeon ; but to refute a vile 
slander; to show that he who invents and 
propagates a falsehood, like Sisyphus, rolls 
a stone to return and crush him. Cratinus 
accuses me of having embezzled the money 
raised for the defence of Greece, and of hav- 
ing expended it in adorning the city of 

225 



226 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

Athens, as a proud and vain woman decketh 
herself with jewels. 

"Have I not defended Greece, while Sparta 
and the allies were reposing in comfort by 
their own firesides ? He avers that I was 
often at the house of Phidias to admire his 
statues, but insinuates that I had a softer 
motive. Suppose I had ; rather let him show 
in what I have betrayed my country, when I 
have oppressed the poor, polluted myself with 
bribes, or turned back in the hour of battle. 
He accuses me of sacrificing the lives of brave 
men to my vaulting ambition, and even affects 
to shed tears over those who fell, in the flower 
of their youth, at Samos. 

" Sacrificing ! Were they machines to move 
at my bidding ? bullocks to be dragged up 
and offered at the altar of Mars ? Were they 
Persian mercenaries, to be driven with whips 
to the conflict ? or were they patriots defend- 
ing their firesides, and I their elder brother ? 
They were the descendants of those who fell 
at Marathon, — men whose youthful locks had 
been worn off by the helmet, and whose fingers 
grew to the sword-hilt. 

" The parents of those brave men did not, 
with reddening cheeks, behold them lying on 



DECLAMATIONS 227 

some feverish couch, like a sick girl, crying 
for cooling drinks ; but they died with their 
wounds in front, the broken sword in their 
hand, and the shout of victory ringing in 
their ears. Oh, yes! one hour of glorious 
conflict — when the blood leaps and the mus- 
cles rally for the mastery, when the hero's 
soul wings its way through gaping wounds to 
Elysium — is worth a whole eternity of sit- 
ting in senates and dull debates, and private 
bickerings, and tame, common life. 

" One day, as we were making forced marches 
across the isthmus in pursuit of the Lacedae- 
monians, a woman, following the camp as a 
sutler, with a child at her breast, fell and 
expired from fatigue. A soldier raised a 
spear to despatch the infant. Moved with 
compassion, I struck down his weapon; for 
I thought of my own little ones at home, 
whose kisses were scarcely yet cold on my 
lips, and even in the confusion of pursuit, I 
provided him with a nurse. 

" On my return, he accompanied me, grew up 
with my children, fed at my table, slept in my 
tent, and fought behind my shield. As a 
reward for life, education, and a thousand 
anxious cares incurred, he has now, by false 



228 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

accusation, summoned me to the tribunal of 
my country, to plead for that life which has 
ever been held cheap in her service. What 
shall be done with such a wretch? I hear 
you exclaim : <i3end for the executioner ! 
burn him to ashes ! fling him from the 
Acropolis ! ' 

" Cratinus, thou art that wretch ; and yet 
methinks thou hast not altogether the noble 
bearing of the patriot who rejoices that he 
has been able to bring to justice the betrayer 
of his country ; but thou hast rather the look 
of some timid shepherd, who, in chasing the 
stag, and pursuing the goat, has, all unwit- 
tingly, stumbled upon the lair of the lion, and, 
too terrified to flee, stands shivering before 
the glaring eyeball of the tawny brute. 

" Thou small thing, I will not hurt thee ; for, 
in the proud consciousness of right, I could 
even pity thee. And, when again thou liest 
among the slain at Megara, thy helmet cleft, 
the lance of the enemy at thy throat, and 
thou with not strength enough to parry it, 
then call for Pericles, and he will again come 
to thy rescue. Farewell, thou grateful child ! 
thou faithful friend ! thou manly enemy ! " 



ICILIUS 

The intolerable oppression of the patricians, 
to which was now added the tyranny of the 
Decemvirs, had excited a spirit of rancor in 
the breasts of the Roman commons, which 
was gradually extending itself to the entire 
army that now lay encamped in a strong posi- 
tion within sight of the enemy. But so sullen 
was their temper that the generals feared to 
lead them from their intrenchments, and the 
only barrier to open mutiny seemed to be the 
absence of special provocation, or the lack of 
a leader. 

Upon the slopes of Crustumeria hung the 
dark masses of the Roman legions, while the 
watch-fires of their enemy, gleaming through 
heavy masses of foliage, lit up the vales 
below. But the haughty joy with which 
these stern warriors were wont to hail the 
hour of conflict no longer thrilled the soldiers' 
breasts. By the dim light of stars men spake 
in whispers ; and murmurs, waxing louder as 



230 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

the night wore on, like the hollow moan of 
surf before the gathering tempest, rose on the 
midnight air. 

Just as the red light, touching, tinged the 
mountain summits, a warrior, clad in gory 
mantle from which the blood, slow dripping, 
had stained his armor and clotted upon his 
horse's mane, rode down the sentry, and, 
bursting into the midst of the camp, shouted, 
" Soldiers, protect a tribune of the people ! " 
Those pregnant words, associated with all of 
liberty the commons had ever known, were 
to the chafed spirits of the soldiery as fire to 
flax. From every quarter of the camp trum- 
pets sounded to arms, the clash of steel min- 
gled with the tramp of hurrying feet, and, 
marshalled by self-elected commanders, the 
gleaming cohorts closed around him. But 
when the helmet, lifted, revealed a face of 
wondrous beauty, stained by the traces of 
recent grief, the eyes flashing with the light 
of incipient madness, and they recognized the 
features of that tribune most of all beloved 
by the people, tears trembled on the cheeks of 
that stern soldiery, and, "Icilius!" ran in a 
low wail through their ranks. 

" Comrades," he cried, " you behold no 



DECLAMATIONS 231 

more that young Icilius who, foot to foot and 
shield to shield with you, has borne the brunt 
of many a bloody day, and whose life was like 
a summer's morning, rich with the fragrance 
of the opening buds, while every morn gave 
promise of new joys, and twilight hours were 
in their lingering glories dressed, — but a man 
sore broken, made ruthless by oppression, and 
so beset with horrors that this reeling brain, 
just tottering on the verge of madness, is 
steadied only by the purpose of revenge. 

" Yesterday, Virginia, my betrothed, was by 
her father slain, to thwart the lust of Appius 
Claudius, a guardian of the public virtue and 
a ruler of the State. 

" As she crosses the forum, on her way to 
school, that she may take leave of her mates, 
and invite them to her bridal, some ruffians set 
on by Appius Claudius lay hold upon her, aver- 
ring that she is not the daughter of Virginius, 
but of a slave-woman, the property of Marcus, 
his client. The matter is brought to public 
trial ; Appius, failing to attain in this manner 
the custody of her, that he may gratify his 
evil passions, commands his soldiers to take 
her by force. Her friends, apprehending no 
violence at a legal tribunal, are without arms. 



232 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

Soldiers are tearing her from her father's em- 
brace, when the stern parent, preferring death 
to dishonor, catches a knife from the butcher's 
stall, and, crying, ' Thus only can I restore 
thee untainted to thine ancestors/ stabs her 
to the heart. 

" The purple torrent gushing from her 
breast, she falls upon my neck, — her arms 
embrace me, — her lips close pressed to mine, 
murmuring in death my name, she dies. 

"In childhood we were lovers; from her 
father's door to mine was but a javelin's cast. 
We sought the nests of birds, — played in the 
brooks, — chased butterflies — we clapped our 
hands in childish wonder when the great 
eagle from the Apennines plunged headlong 
to the vale, or skimmed with level wing 
along the flood, — and I, adventurous boy, 
risked life and limb upon the jutting crag, to 
pluck some wild flower that her fancy pleased. 

"As generous wine by age becomes more 
potent, thus fared it with our loves. For her 
I kept myself unstained, rushed to the battle's 
front, and honors gained, that I might lay 
them at her feet, and by her love inspired, 
press on to worthier deeds. Like flowers 
whose kindred roots intwine, whose perfume 



DECLAMATIONS 233 

mingles on the morning air, did our affections 
blend. 'Twas but three nights ago that we 
sat hand in hand beside the Tiber, and lis- 
tened to the song of nightingales among the 
elms. The purple twilight quivering through 
the leaves streamed o'er her brow, and bathed 
in heavenly hues her lovely form. 

" There we talked of our approaching nup- 
tials. Love ripened into rapture. I kissed 
her lips, and chid the slow-paced hours that 
kept us from our bliss. The marriage day 
was fixed. With curtains richly wrought, and 
coverings of finest linen, spun by her own 
hands and by her maidens', my mother had 
adorned the couch. 

" To that sweet home where I had hoped 
through happy years to cherish her a wife, I 
bore her mangled corpse, gashed by her father's 
hand. Her blood bedewed the bed decked 
with those nuptial gifts. 

" To you, mates of my boyhood, brethren in 
battle tried, I stretch my hands ; not in the 
petty interest of private wrong, but in the 
sacred right of Roman liberty, of virgin 
purity, sweet household joys, and in the name 
of those whose fair forms mingle with your 
dreams, in the fierce shock of battle nerve 



234 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

your arms, the fragrance of whose parting 
kiss yet lingers on your lips. 

" The blood of age creeps slowly, and in its 
timid counsels interest and fear bear sway. 
Shall youthful swords lie rusting in the scab- 
bards, and young men count the odds, when 
slaughtered beauty from its bloody grave 
clamors for vengeance? 

" Behold this mantle, drenched in the blood 
of her whose ringers wove it as a gift of love, 
— each precious drop a tongue to shame your 
lingering courage. Led by the father with 
his bloody knife, your comrades thunder at 
the gates of Rome, while you, unworthy sons 
of sires who banished Tarquin and expelled 
the kings, sit here deliberating whether the 
virgin's sanctity, the wife's fair virtue, and 
all that men and gods hold sacred, are worth 
the striking for. Consume your youth in 
hunger, cold, and vigils, with spoils of con- 
quered realms to pamper tyrants, till, waxing 
wanton on your bounty, they desolate your 
homes; and ye, hedged in by mercenary 
spears, revile your misery." 

His words were drowned in the clash of 
steel and the cries of multitudes calling to 
arms. Tearing the bloody garments in pieces, 



DECLAMATIONS 235 

he flung them among the thronging battal- 
ions. " Be these your eagles. Bind them to 
your helmets ; and, in the spirit they inspire, 
strike down the oppressor, that sweet Vir- 
ginia's unquiet ghost no more may wander 
shrieking for vengeance on the midnight air, 
but to the silent shades appeased return." 



DECIUS 

Patriotism in the Roman breast was some- 
thing more than principle ; it was a passion. 
The sacred fire, so far from being diminished 
by age, waxed purer through the decay of the 
flesh, and, partaking of the nature of a divine 
afflatus, expired only with life itself. After 
all reasonable allowances made for the en- 
chantment which distance flings around the 
great of past ages, the instances of devotion 
to country, scattered here and there through 
the pages of their history, fill us with amaze- 
ment. To extend its empire, contribute to its 
glory, repel its enemies, no sacrifice was 
deemed too great. In common with other 
ancient nations they believed that the blood 
of a human victim, smoking upon the altar, 
was a sacrifice most acceptable to the gods, 
and in great emergencies an argument of 
wondrous power. It was therefore resorted 
to only when the fate of armies and nations 
hung trembling in the balance. 

236 



DECLAMATIONS 237 

The victims chosen were often aged, useless, 
or prisoners taken in war ; but when a virgin 
in the purity of her innocence and the glory 
of her expanding charms, or a man of noble 
birth in the prime of manly vigor, with 
high hopes and great inducements to live, 
voluntarily devoted themselves to die for 
the State, victory was considered no longer 
doubtful. 

The Roman army being engaged in desper- 
ate conflict, and hard pressed by a valiant foe, 
the left wing, under command of Deems, was 
forced to retire ; their general, determined to 
devote himself, arrayed in a mantle broidered 
with purple, and standing with bare feet upon 
his spear, cried : " Ye gods and heroes who 
rule over us and our enemies, and ye infernal 
deities whose dwelling is in the shades be- 
neath, I invoke your presence. I entreat you 
to give victory to the Roman armies, and 
strike their enemies with fear and death. I 
here devote myself to mother earth and the 
shades of my ancestors in behalf of the Roman 
republic, her legions and auxiliaries, and with 
myself I devote the legions and auxiliaries of 
the enemy. For every drop of my blood shed 
in holy sacrifice grant that theirs may flow in 



238 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

torrents ; for my single life, may they atone 
by thousands." 

Putting on his armor and mounting his 
horse, he said : " It is well known to you, my 
countrymen, that our fathers have taught us 
both by their words and acts, that it is the 
duty of every citizen to devote himself to the 
welfare of his country. They have taught us 
during peace to cultivate the soil, to despise 
luxury and effeminate pursuits, and, by beget- 
ting and educating children, to strengthen the 
State ; in war by valor to defend it ; nor with- 
out sufficient reason to risk our lives, the 
property of our country, bestowed by the 
gods. This I have ever striven to do. I am 
indeed young to die ; age hath not tamed my 
sinews, nor misfortune broken my spirits, that 
I should be weary of life ; fortune thus far 
has been friendly to me, reasonable expecta- 
tions have been gratified, and efforts crowned 
with success. I might justly hope for many 
years of usefulness to my country and honor 
to myself, but it is now in my power, by 
devoting myself, to secure the interposition of 
the gods in crowning with victory the banners 
of our country and destroying its foes. 

"It would be a solace to me once more 



DECLAMATIONS 239 

to embrace an affectionate wife and dutiful 
children, to look again upon the trees I have 
planted and watched in their growth till they 
have become a part of myself, and upon the 
fields from which for so many years I have 
raised my bread and that of my family. I 
should like to walk over them once more, 
but I leave them with all my other affairs to 
the care of the State, which I am assured I 
shall this day more benefit by death than by 
the longest and most prosperous life. To you, 
Valerius, I commit the care of interring my 
body, that, having received the sacred rites 
of burial, I may enter those happy fields, 
where dwell the shades of heroes and my 
warlike ancestors. I commission you to in- 
form my wife of the manner of my death, 
charging her to educate my sons in a manner 
worthy of their father and their ancestors. 

"I pray you, my friends, look not so mourn- 
fully upon me, as though some great misfor- 
tune were about to befall me ; for, though I 
may no longer lead you to battle, my shade 
will be present with you and nerve your arms 
to strike for the safety and glory of the Re- 
public. The spirits of our ancestors hover 
around us ; I behold their shadowy forms. 



240 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

The immortal gods are present for our aid. 
Jove thunders from the sky and Apollo bends 
the bow." 

Followed by the frantic legions assured of 
victory, he rushed into the midst of the foe ; 
they fled in terror before the terrible warrior 
armed with supernatural terrors and seeking 
only death. The contest ended, the victo- 
rious Romans drew the body of their general 
from beneath a heap of slain, contemplating 
with emotions of mingled pride and sorrow 
the wounds which had let out a spirit so 
noble. They cleansed that beloved form from 
the stains of battle, arrayed it in gorgeous 
robes perfumed with fragrant odors, and rev- 
erend senators bore it to the grave. 



LEONIDAS 

It was on the morn of the 7th of August, 
480 B.C., that Leonidas, with three hundred 
kindred spirits, performed the deed that shall 
be transmitted from father to son, through 
the generations of men, while human hearts 
shall throb with the love of country and of 
the domestic hearth. Four days had the 
haughty invader lingered at the mountain 
pass to afford this desperate band time to 
reconsider their act and disperse. Summoned 
to lay down their arms, they replied, " Come 
and take them." Vainly had he poured his 
thousands upon this devoted band till the 
defile was choked with Persian dead. At 
length the tidings came that ten thousand 
men guided by a traitor were threading the 
goat paths to attack their rear. With ample 
opportunity to retreat, in obedience to the 
laws of their country, which forbade its sol- 
diers to retreat from the foe, the Spartans, 
dismissing their allies, remained to face the 

241 



242 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

storm. Never before or since has law been 
thus voluntarily baptized in blood, or the sun 
looked down upon a scene like that. 

On one side in solitary grandeur tower the 
massive cliffs of (Eta, wreathed with the white 
foam of torrents, and shaggy with forests bathed 
in dew ; before stretches the narrow path lead- 
ing to a plain, where lie the hosts of Xerxes, 
two million men ; and on the other, the sea. 

In these rude ages of brawl and battle his 
life and liberty alone were safe whose hand 
could help his head ; thus also in respect to 
communities, the nation unable to defend it- 
self found no allies ; to be weak was to be 
miserable. The institutions of Lycurgus aimed 
to produce the greatest physical strength, con- 
tempt of pain and death, and to inspire an 
absorbing love of country. They decreed that 
all puny and imperfect children should be put 
to death, thus leaving to grow up only the 
strongest of the race. All labor was per- 
formed by slaves, that the citizens might be 
left at leisure for the study and practice of 
arms. The fatigues of their daily life were 
greater than those of the camp, and to the 
Spartan alone war afforded a relaxation. 
Their cities disdained the protection of 



DECLAMATIONS 243 

walls, while they boasted that the women 
had never seen the smoke of an enemy's 
camp. From the breast they were taught 
that glory and happiness consisted in love 
for their country and obedience to its laws. 
They were early accustomed to cold, hunger, 
and scourgings, in order to teach them endur- 
ance and contempt of pain. No tender parent 
wrought with saddened brow their battle robes, 
or buckled on with tears their armor ; but the 
Spartan mother's farewell to her son was, 
" Bring back thy shield or be borne upon it." 
Trained in the contests of the gymnasium 
and the free life of the hunter and the war- 
rior, accustomed from childhood to the weight 
of harness graduated to their growing strength, 
their armor grew to their limbs, and was worn 
with a grace and their weapons wielded with 
a skill that was instinctive. 

Such were the stern brotherhood, chosen 
from a thousand Spartans, all the fathers of 
living sons, that others might be left to fill 
their places, inherit their spirit, and follow 
their example. In those forms so replete 
with manly beauty dwelt a spirit more noble 
still, which, preferring the toils of liberty to 
the ease of servitude, caught from those 



244 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

frowning precipices and that matchless sky, 
ever flinging its shadow over sea and shore, 
a love for the soil enduring as life itself. 

As the sun arose they bathed their bodies 
in water, anointed themselves with oil, and 
arranged their hair as for a banquet. "Let 
us," said Leonidas, "breakfast heartily, for 
we shall all sup with Pluto to-night." 

"Comrades," cried the heroic king, as the 
serried ranks gathered around him, "those 
whose laws do not forbid them to retreat from 
the foe have left us. I welcome you to death ; 
had not treachery done its work, three hun- 
dred Spartans would have still held at bay 
two million slaves. Deem not because we, 
trained in all feats of arms, in the full 
strength of manhood, perish nor hold the 
pass, our country's gate, we therefore die 
for naught. This day shall we do more for 
Sparta than could the longest life consumed 
in war or councils of the State. As trees that 
fall in lonely forests die but to live again, and 
with other trees incorporate, lift their proud 
tops to heaven, wave in the breeze, and fling 
their shadows over the murmuring streams, 
thus shall our blood, which ere high noon 
shall smoke upon these rocks and stain these 



DECLAMATIONS 245 

fretting waves, beget defenders for the soil it 
consecrates. To-day you fight the battles of 
a thousand years and teach this vaunting foe 
that bodies are not men, that freedom's laws 
are mightier than the knotted scourge or 
chains by despots forged. The savor of this 
holocaust, borne by the winds and journeying 
on the waves, shall nerve the patriot's arm, 
while Pinda rears its awful front, and from 
its sacred caves the streams descend. In- 
spired by this your act, henceforth five hun- 
dred Spartan men shall count a thousand. 
Our countrymen with envy shall view the 
gaping wounds through which the hero's soul 
flees to the silent shades, and mourn they were 
not privileged with us to die. Our children 
shall tread with prouder step their native hills, 
while men exclaim each to the other, ' Behold 
the sons of sires who slumber at Thermopy- 
lae.' These battered arms, gathered with 
jealous care, shall hallow every home; our 
little ones with awful reverence shall point to 
the shivered sword, the war-scarred shield, 
the bloody vesture or the helmet cleft, and 
say, ' My father bore these arms at old Ther- 
mopylae.' With noble ardor shall they yearn 
for the day when their young arms shall bear 



246 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

ancestral shields, the spear sustain, and, like 
their sires, strike home on bloody fields for 
liberty and law." 

Their courage needed to be attempered, not 
aroused by the clangor of trumpets, the stormy 
roll of drums, and the frantic shout of multi- 
tudes. To the sound of softest music, and 
decked with flowers as for a bridal, they 
marched upon their foe. 

Now flute notes and the sweet music of the 
Spartan lyre floated upon the breath of morn 
as they encountered the foe. Persian arrows 
and javelins darkened the air, and discordant 
yells rose up to heaven, but before that terrible 
phalanx the multitudes went down like grass 
before the scythe of the mower. Their spears 
gave no second thrust, their swords no second 
blow ; assailed at length by millions in front 
and rear, they were slain and not subdued. 
Yet does their influence live in all literature 
and all lands. To-day they teach the age 
that there are nobler employments for man 
than the acquisition of riches or the pursuit 
of pleasure. The patriot scholar goes from 
the contemplation of the relics of Roman and 
Grecian art, to pay a deeper devotion at their 
grass-grown sepulchre ; listens to the dash of 



DECLAMATIONS 247 

waves, breaking as they broke upon the ear 
of Leonidas and his heroes, when, on that 
proud morning, they marched forth to die ; 
reads with awe that sublime epitaph and 
passes on a better patriot and a better 
man. 



THE CENTURION 

The Roman Senate, in high conclave as- 
sembled, deliberated respecting the raising of 
fresh levies of men and arms. Powerful and 
vindictive foes, with difficulty held at bay, 
were gathering for attack, while the commons 
were ripe for revolt. Meanwhile, a turbulent 
crowd thronged the forum, surging to and 
fro like forests tossed by conflicting winds. 
Exasperated by oppression, beggared by usury, 
they recounted their causes of discontent, and 
thus fanned the smouldering flame in each 
other's breast. It was from their households 
the conscription now pending was to be made ; 
their blood was to stain the fields of battle, 
and victory, bringing but empty honors, would 
leave them more under the power of their 
masters than before. To increase the confu- 
sion, some Latin horsemen came full speed 
to the city, announcing that the Volsci were 
on their inarch to attack it ; upon which the 
people set up a shout of joy, willing to perish 

248 



DECLAMATIONS 249 

if so be their oppressors might perish with 
them. 

Cries of agony now arose above the tumult, 
and an old man pursued by creditors ran into 
the midst imploring aid ; but his pursuers 
catching hold of the chain which was fastened 
to his right foot, he fell upon his face, while 
the blood gushed from his nostrils. He had 
just escaped from the dungeon of a creditor ; 
his clothes were in tatters ; his body emaci- 
ated by hunger ; while his face, hideous with 
matted hair and beard, resembled more that 
of a beast than of a man. Some soldiers at 
length recalled the face of a centurion under 
whom they had served, famed for military 
skill, and distinguished by honors received as 
the reward of valor in the field. It needed 
but this spark to ignite a train already pre- 
pared for explosion. With a roar, like that 
of surges upon a winter's beach, they trampled 
his pursuers beneath their feet, bidding him 
without fear to tell his tale, for they would 
protect him though it were necessary to fling 
both senate and consuls into the Tiber. And 
now to that fearful uproar succeeded a silence 
like that of the sepulchre, permitting the 
feeble tones of the miserable man to reach 



250 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

every ear and touch every heart in that vast 
assembly, as thus he spake : — 

" Ten years ago, my countrymen, I was the 
owner of a little farm, the fruit of my labor 
and that of my ancestors. It lay along the 
base of hills around whose roots wound a brook 
which, watering my fields, ran into the Tiber ; 
on its banks grew the elms that sustained our 
vines ; the hills were clothed with chestnut and 
olives, and there also was the pasture of my 
flocks. In the sheltered vale beneath, the 
almond mingled with the fig, the flax spread 
its azure flowers to the sun, apples bent the 
laden boughs, and grain rewarded the toil of the 
reaper. How dear to me was that humble cot 
with its straw-thatched roof from which the 
swallows sprang to greet the breaking day; 
where the stock-dove hung its nest in the 
beechen shade, and morning breezes brought 
perfume to its threshold. How sweet, when 
the weary bullocks were released from the 
yoke, to lie among the lengthening shadows 
and listen to the dying breeze steal through 
the soft acanthus leaves in wild, low music. 
Our wants were few and easily satisfied ; my 
wife ground the corn, her hands spun and 
wove our clothing, my children were dutiful ; 



DECLAMATIONS 251 

we led a frugal, happy life, revering the im- 
mortal gods and cherishing the virtues of our 
fathers. These few acres, valued as the fruit 
of my own labor, the gift of my ancestors, con- 
secrated by their toil and pregnant with their 
ashes, were to me inexpressibly dear. I, indeed, 
was most of the time in arms for my country, 
yet often in the midnight watches of the camp 
did memory picture those sunny fields, my 
family thinking and talking of the absent 
soldier ; nor did I forget to thank the immor- 
tal gods, that, should my country require my 
life, my family possessed a heritage and a 
home. The sun was declining as I neared 
my native vale on my return from the Sabine 
war. Eagerly I pressed to the brow of the 
hill that I might look down upon that dear 
cot. It was a heap of ashes ; the storm of war 
had swept over those pleasant fields ; fire had 
consumed the standing corn; the cattle were 
driven off, and the beauty of the groves had 
departed. As nearer I drew, I descried the 
body of my wife and first-born lying dead at 
the threshold ; the rest had fled, not a living 
thing, even a dog, was left to welcome me; 
and the tired soldier had not where to lay his 
head. 



252 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

" To war succeeded famine, hostilities con- 
tinued, taxes increased, the land lay untilled. 
I was compelled to borrow money at exorbitant 
usury ; that loved heritage passed into the 
hands of strangers. The golden crown and 
silver chain, bestowed for being the first to 
enter the enemy's camp, went next ; they are 
in the coffers of a man who never saw the 
color of a foeman's eye nor drew his sword in 
the State's behalf. All this not sufficing, my 
creditor immured me in a foul dungeon beneath 
his palace ; with fifteen pounds of iron, the 
utmost the law permits, was I loaded ; a pound 
of corn and water was my daily food, and I, 
a Roman citizen and a centurion, was scourged 
like a dog. Had I not broken my chain and 
flung myself upon you for protection, this war- 
worn body would have been cut in pieces and 
apportioned among my creditors. 

" Comrades on many a bloody field, behold this 
arm, — which in twenty-eight battles has fought 
for the liberty of Rome till the hand clave to 
the sword hilt, ■ — worn by cruel fetters to the 
bone ; this body, seamed with honorable scars, 
dripping blood from the knotted scourge. 
Milder tortures would have been reserved 
for me had I been the betrayer instead of 



DECLAMATIONS 253 

the defender of my country. The laws which 
consume the poor man's substance and drain 
his blood are by usurers enacted, by them are 
executed. Usurers rob the public chest and 
parcel out the conquered lands among them- 
selves. Let us, rather than longer submit to 
such extortion, fling wide the gates to the 
approaching enemy, leave them to exercise 
their wisdom in making laws where there 
are none to govern, levying taxes where there 
are none to pay, and displaying their valor 
where there is nought to defend. By the 
ashes of that ruined home, those loved forms 
mangled by the Sabine sword and devoured 
by the vultures of the Apennines, by the suf- 
ferings of my remaining children whose young 
lives are consumed by the tortures from which 
I have fled, by him who on Olympus holds his 
awful seat and shakes the nations with his 
nod, I conjure you to assert the rights of the 
people and the ancient liberties of Rome." 



VIRGINIUS TO THE ROMAN ARMY 

The night wind blew in fitful gusts, with 
occasional dashes of rain, where, grouped 
around their watch-fires, and sheltered by 
the dense foliage of a beechen grove, a Roman 
cohort held its leaguer. Some, their spears 
thrust into the ground beside them, sat up- 
right against the trees; while others lay at 
full length, with their heads resting upon 
their shields. 

As the flames threw their red light upon 
the war-scarred faces of the veterans, they 
revealed only sullen features. No song nor 
jest was heard, — no sound, save the low hiss 
of the raindrops on the embers, the bay of a 
wolf in the distant forest, and the low mut- 
tered words of a soldier who was telling to his 
comrade how that, the night before, as the 
sun fell over the hills, a centurion rode past 
his beat full speed to Rome, summoned there 
by some new outrage of the Patricians. 

254 



DECLAMATIONS 255 

All that night, throughout the host, mys- 
terious forebodings crept. Men around their 
watch-fires spake in low whispers ; and many 
a silent grasp of the hand passed from man to 
man. As the night wore away, and the day 
dawned, Virginius, upon a foaming steed, his 
head bare, and in his right hand a bloody 
knife, dashed past the guard to where — 
beneath an oak which, withered and scorched 
by sacrificial fires, flung no shadow — great 
Jove was worshipped. 

Mounting the altar-steps, he turned, and, 
with bloodshot eyes, glared upon the sol- 
diers who thronged tumultuously around him. 
Holding aloft the bloody knife, he exclaimed, 
" With this weapon I have slain my only 
child, to preserve her from dishonor ! " Yells 
of horror and bitter execrations rose from the 
whole army; and a thousand swords flashed 
in the sun's bright beams. 

" Soldiers I " he cried, " I am like this 
blasted tree. Two years ago the Ides of 
May three lusty sons went with me to the 
field. In one disastrous fight they perished. 
A daughter, beautiful as the day, yet re- 
mained; 'tis but a week ago you saw her 
here, bearing to her old sire home comforts 



256 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

prepared by her own hands, and sharing with 
him the evening meal, and you blessed her as 
you passed. 

"You'll never see her more, who weekly 
came, with the soft music of her voice, and 
spells of home, to cheer our hearts. As on 
her way to school she crossed the Forum, 
Appius Claudius, through his minion Marcus, 
claimed her as a slave. With desperate haste 
I rode to Rome. Holding my daughter by 
the hand, and by my side her uncle, her aged 
grandsire, and Icilius her betrothed, I claimed 
my child. 

"The judge, that he may gain his end, 
decides that in his house and custody she 
must remain, till I, by legal process, prove my 
right! The guards approach. Trembling, 
she clings around my neck, — her hot tears 
on my cheek. Snatching this knife from a 
butcher's stall, I plunged it in her breast, that 
her pure soul might go free and unstained to 
her mother and her ancestors. 

" And this is the reward a grateful country 
gives her soldiery ! Cursed be the day my 
mother bore me! Accursed my sire's un- 
timely joy ! Accursed the twilight hour, 
when 'mid Etruscan groves I wooed and 



DECLAMATIONS 257 

won Acestes' beauteous child, while youth's 
bright dreams were busy at my heart ! 

" Soldiers ! the deadliest foes of our liber- 
ties are behind, not before us; they are not 
the iEqui, the Volsci, and the Sabines, who 
meet us in fair fight ; but that pampered 
aristocracy, who chain you by the death- 
penalty to the camp, that in your absence 
they may work their will upon those you 
leave behind. 

" But why do I seek to kindle a fire in ice ? 
Why seek to arouse the vengeance of those 
who care for no miseries but their own, and 
are enamoured of their fetters? I, indeed, 
can lose no more. Misfortune hath emptied 
her quiver, — she hath no other shaft for this 
bleeding breast; but flatter not yourselves 
that the lust of Appius Claudius has expired 
with the defeat of his purpose. 

" Your homes, likewise, invite the destroyer ; 
into your fold the grim wolf will leap ; among 
the lambs of your flock will he revel, his jaws 
dripping blood. For you, also, the bow is 
bent ; the arrow drawn to the head ; and the 
string impatient of its charge. By all that I 
have lost, and that you imperil by delay, 
avenge this accursed wrong ! 



258 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

" If you have arms, use them ; liberties, 
vindicate them ; patriotism, save the tottering 
State ; natural affection, protect the domestic 
hearth ; piety, appease the wrath of the gods 
by avenging the blood that cries to heaven. 
To arms ! To arms ! or your swords will 
leap from their scabbards, the trumpets sound 
the onset, and the standards of themselves 
advance to rebuke your delay!" 



GENERAL GAGE AND THE BOSTON 
BOYS 

The year seventeen hundred and seventy- 
five dawned gloomily upon the inhabitants of 
Massachusetts Bay. Portentous clouds dark- 
ened the political horizon, while clear-sighted 
and forecasting men prepared themselves for 
a struggle they saw to be inevitable. The 
attempt to crush by force of arms the spirit 
of liberty in the colonies had already com- 
menced. A hostile fleet, with guns double- 
shotted and trained upon the town, lay at 
anchor in Boston Harbor. The town was 
under martial law, the hills bristled with 
cannon, sentinels challenged the citizen going 
to his daily vocations, and the common was 
a camp. 

On the wharves of this busy emporium of 
colonial trade that had been wont to send its 
thousand vessels each year to foreign and 
domestic ports, the sailor's song was hushed, 

259 



260 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

warehouses were closed, and no canvas flut- 
tered to the breeze. But few shops, and those 
only which dealt in the necessaries of life, were 
opened, and the hammer of the artisan lay- 
rusting on the anvil. In many streets the 
snow lying white and undisturbed before the 
doors of hospitable dwellings evinced that 
their occupants had fled from a tyranny 
they were unable to resist. Beneath this 
grinding oppression, so intolerable to the 
spirit of a free people, no weak complaints 
were uttered nor sounds of riot heard. The 
citizen pursuing his business brushed the 
sentinel with a calm brow and sealed lips, 
and the children went to and fro to their 
schools and plays. 

When soldiers barracked and horses were 
stabled in their churches, when bayonets 
gleamed in their halls of legislation, they 
lifted up the voice to God in other places and 
the town meeting was held as heretofore. 
For the first time in the history of peoples, 
the flocks sported in the pasture or slept 
in the fold unconscious of the butcher's knife ; 
the inhabitants of Massachusetts had resolved 
to eat no mutton, that their resources might 
be increased. On the roofs of sheds and 



DECLAMATIONS 261 

porticoes wool and flax were bleaching ; from 
hundreds of dwellings were heard the hum of 
the wheel and the stroke of the loom, where 
the mothers of heroes were preparing their 
children for the forum or the field. Balls 
were run and cartridges made by the hands 
of women and children at the kitchen fire, 
and, deftly concealed in loads of offal, passed 
unchallenged the sentries to hiding-places in 
the neighboring towns. Men who pursued 
their usual labors during the day met at mid- 
night in garrets and cellars, and after swearing 
upon the Scriptures to keep secret the pur- 
pose of the meeting, consulted and prayed 
together, enduring meanwhile as best they 
might the insults of the soldiery. 

It was Wednesday afternoon and half -holi- 
day. General Gage, commander of troops 
that held watch and ward over the rebels in 
Massachusetts Bay and the town of Boston in 
particular, was sitting in his quarters at the 
Province House. The general's brow was 
clouded and he was evidently a prey to un- 
easy thoughts ; the intelligent perversity of 
his opponents both perplexed and alarmed 
him. He liked not the unwonted calm, the 
utter absence of bluster and bravado, for he 



262 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

knew too well the temper of the people with 
whom he had to deal to mistake silence for 
submission. He had fought with Washington 
at Duquesne, aided to bear the dying Brad- 
dock from the field, and feared that the rifles 
that then saved the British army from utter 
destruction were only biding their time, and 
the drums that beat at Louisburg might at 
any moment wake the slumbering fires and 
the mine explode beneath his feet. 

While thus uneasily balancing probabilities, 
his servant announced that some boys re- 
quested an interview. The general, who was 
exceedingly fond of children, ordered them to 
be admitted. 

" Well, boys," he inquired, " what is your 
business with me ? " 

" We have come, sir," said the tallest boy, 
" to demand satisfaction." 

"What, have your fathers been teaching 
you rebellion and sent you to show it 
here ? " 

" No, sir, nobody sent us and nobody told 
us to come, but we've come of our own accord 
for our rights. The common belongs to the 
people of Boston and their children. We are 
town born, all of us, and so are the boys 



DECLAMATIONS 263 

whom we represent, therefore we have a right 
to play on the common. We have asked 
many old people, and they tell us that boys 
always have had this right, that they played 
there and their fathers before them. We 
have never made faces at your soldiers, called 
them lobsters, thrown snowballs at them, or 
insulted them in any manner, but while we 
were minding our business, skating and build- 
ing snow hills, just as we have always done 
every winter before even they were here, they 
came and trampled down our sliding hills, and 
broke the ice on our skating ground with the 
breech of their musket. We complained ; 
they called us young rebels and told us to 
help ourselves if we could. We then went to 
the captain, and he laughed at us. We have 
come, sir, for our rights. We want only the 
rights which the law gives us and boys have 
always had. Yesterday your soldiers de- 
stroyed our works for the third time, and we 
won't endure this oppression any longer. 
Your soldiers may shoot us if they wish, but 
if you will not give us satisfaction, we will 
get together all the boys and defend our works 
while there is a snowball, a stone, or a boy 
left in the town of Boston ; for if we can't 



264 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

play on our own common and skate on our 
own pond, what can we do ? " 

The general could not but admire the 
resolution of the boys and assured them that 
henceforth their rights should be respected. 



THE WRECKED PIRATE 

In the year 1813 a piratical schooner was 
wrecked upon one of the desolate Keys of the 
Bahamas. The captain alone, of a crew of 
ninety men, reached shore upon a broken 
spar. For several months he subsisted upon 
shell-fish and tropical fruits, with which the 
island abounded, eked out by some provisions 
saved from the wreck. 

While in this solitude, feelings which had 
long slumbered were awakened in his breast, 
and his heart was melted to repentance. 

After long months of waiting, he was res- 
cued by a passing vessel bound for Spain. A 
pardon was at length obtained for him from 
the Spanish government, and he ever after 
lived a Christian life. But what thus wrought 
upon the heart of the savage, hardened in 
crime and blood? "Fear," I hear you ex- 
claim, " heightened by that terrible solitude ; 
death groans and piteous entreaties for mercy 
that haunted each lonely ravine, and moaned 

265 



266 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

in the winds of midnight ! " Oh, no ; it was 
but the evening song of the turtle-doves which 
built their nests among the mangrove bushes 
that fringed the borders of the creeks. 

Behold him as he stands ! that man of 
brawl and battle, his stern features unmoved 
as the cliffs beside him, gazing upon the bodies 
of the companions of many a bloody fray, 
tossed amid the fragments of broken timbers 
in the surf at his feet. What a mingling of 
the elements of agony and fear! — the abyss of 
ocean, the lonely wreck, the livid bodies of the 
dead, the desolate shore, himself cut off from 
all human fellowship, a stinging conscience 
within, and the eternal God above him, whose 
lightnings play around his head. All these 
move him not. But hark ! As those bird- 
notes, so sweetly mournful, strike upon his 
ear, familiar through many an hour of care- 
less boyhood in his early home, the blood 
flushes to his cheek and lip ; the sweat bedews 
his brow. Those soft notes recall days of in- 
nocence, ere blood had stained his hand, and 
remorse was gnawing at his heartstrings. 
The low notes of a mother's prayer thrill, like 
some forgotten melody, upon his ear. Again 
her lips are pressed to his as when she kissed 



DECLAMATIONS 267 

him for the last time, upon his father's thresh- 
old. Tears are streaming down those cheeks, 
bronzed by burning suns and furrowed by sea- 
foam and tempest ; and that voice, whose stern 
tones had risen above the roar of battle and 
roused the seaman from his slumbers like the 
trump of doom, grows all tremulous with emo- 
tion as he cries, "God, be merciful to me a 
sinner.' ' 



SPEECHES 



"AN OUNCE OF PREVENTION" 

[Delivered at a meeting of the Temperance Society in 
Boston in 1861] 

Were I called upon, Mr. Chairman, to define 
intemperance by its effects, I would say : " It 
is that which covers the fields of the husband- 
man with tares and thorns, and strews the 
ocean with wrecks. It is that which renders 
the clerk unfaithful to his employer, the public 
man to his constituents, the magistrate to his 
oath of office, the parent to his family, and all 
who are trusted to every trust. It is that which 
stirs to mutiny every corrupt passion, weak- 
ens every motive to virtue, adds strength to 
vicious allurements, and pushes the reluctant 
will over the verge of every damnable and des- 
perate enterprise. So well is this understood 
by the doers of evil that it is in the armies of 
evil the regular weapon whose value is un- 
questioned after the experience of ages. Is 
a seaman to be enticed to desert his ship or a 

271 



272 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

soldier his colors? Ply him with liquor. Is 
a ruffian steeped in crime to be urged to some 
deed of horror from which even his hardened 
nature revolts ? Ply him with liquor. Is a 
young man with his curiosity awake, his pas- 
sions pure and jubilant, and his heart throb- 
bing with warm impulses of budding life to be 
put upon that same descending grade opening 
to a like abyss of utter loathsomeness, his fair 
face to be rendered shameless, and his lips to 
reek of the pit? Then go, thou familiar 
spirit, whose abode is in the sparkling cup, 
assume the form of beauty and youth, show 
him not at once thy craven features, but 
while his arm is linked in thine, accustom 
him by slow gradations to the festive and 
genial cup. 

The ways and methods of doing good are 
not intuitive. They are, as in the arts and 
crafts, the result of effort and experience. 
Good men by long practice into which they 
have flung their very hearts have learned 
more and more effective methods of grappling 
with intemperance. At first they began with 
cure ; now they try prevention, not forgetting 
the other. Once they went alongside the old 
hulk stranded on the beach, her masts gone 



SPEECHES 273 

by the board, her rigging white and weather- 
worn hanging over her bulwarks, ochre hang- 
ing from her opening seams, and refitting 
and relaunching her, they obtained from the 
stranded hulk a few years of inferior service. 
Now they buoy the channel and light the 
beacon, and thus prevent the shipwreck. 
Noble men went to the inebriate crawling in 
the gutter ; with kindly sympathy they raised 
him up and restored him to usefulness and 
power. But who, save the inebriate himself, 
can tell the bitterness of that struggle between 
the man, the husband, the father, struggling 
to rise, and the demon that strives to drag 
him back ? How true it is that that accursed 
longing never dies ! How true it is that we 
need never learn to drink but once! What 
temperance reformer is there who has not 
shed bitter tears over the final w r reck of those 
whom he thought he had saved ? 

Thus noble efforts were made, multitudes 
partially, and many really reformed, but all 
the time behind there was a thronging army 
of young men treading the same paths. But, 
taught by experience, men have now begun 
to grapple with this evil on its strongest 
ground; that is, in its social aspect, that 



274 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

which is most alluring to the romantic and 
the young. 

I may safely say that from the beginning 
of social life the great mass of the literature, 
genius, and wealth of the world has been, 
and is now, on the side of intemperance. The 
greatest poets that ever lived have sung in 
strains of beauty that captivated the young 
heart the praises of the ruby wine. It has 
for ages been interwoven with all festivals, 
— the meeting and parting of social life. 
It is this more than the love of liquor that 
attracts. In this view wine becomes the 
exponent of all that is genial and warm; 
temperance of all that is cold, forbidding, and 
repulsive. It is for just this purpose and to 
meet the enemy at just this point that associa- 
tions like this have been formed. They seek 
to show that the flowing bowl is not of neces- 
sity the quick ener of the intellect, or of all 
ardent and generous feeling; that it is not 
the only elixir for the heavy heart. They 
would show that there are other pleasures as 
exhilarating as those of the wine cup — pleas- 
ures that leave no sting behind. They would 
show that men can be earnest scholars, 
sympathetic friends, jovial companions, and 



SPEECHES 275 

» 

at the same time taste not, touch not, and 
handle not the wine cup, or be under any 
obligations to alcohol for their enjoyment. 
May this association in the heart of this great 
city accomplish its purpose, and be the young 
man's friend. 



RELIGIOUS WORSHIP EARLY IN THE 
CENTURY 

[Delivered at the Municipal Celebration of the one hun- 
dredth anniversary of the incorporation of the town of 
Portland, Maine, Sunday, July 4, 1886.] 

Me. Chairman: Having been requested to 
offer some remarks in respect to the conduct 
of religious worship early in the century, I 
would say that early impressions are the most 
enduring, and religious impressions more so 
than all others, resulting from the fact that 
they are not so much impressions as the de- 
velopment of innate tendencies kept alive and 
nourished by the intercourse that all men, to a 
greater or less extent, hold with their Creator. 
There are none that so resent interference or 
are with such difficulty eradicated. Though 
by no means one of the good boys who die 
young, and with little inclination to acquire 
knowledge by books or by dint of study, 
there were two subjects that always possessed 
for me a peculiar interest and attraction — 

276 



SPEECHES 277 

one the employment by which men obtained 
their bread, and the other the discussion of 
religious doctrines, though utterly averse to 
any personal application of them. I recollect 
that when I had twenty-five cents given me 
by my father to go to Sukey Baker's tavern 
to see an elephant, a rare sight in those days, 
I sat as demure as a mouse in my father's 
study the greater part of an afternoon listen- 
ing to a discussion between him and a Hopkin- 
sonian minister upon disinterested benevolence, 
which was brought at last to an abrupt ter- 
mination in consequence of the use by the 
Hopkinsonian of the following illustration : 
" Suppose, Brother Kellogg, I was walking 
over a bridge with two ladies, to one of whom 
I was tenderly attached and engaged to be 
married, the other an indifferent person. My 
particular friend, I am aware, is a person of 
ordinary ability, but the other lady is possessed 
of great mental powers thoroughly disciplined, 
and both of them are in a state of grace. The 
bridge breaks through and we fall into the 
stream. I can save but one of them, and in 
that case it would be my duty, even if I had 
to leave my personal friend to perish, to save 
the more gifted person, because she is able 



278 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

and qualified to do more for the glory of 
God." My father ended the discussion by 
rising and declaring that a man who could 
cherish, much more propagate, such abomi- 
nable sentiments was not fit to preach the 
Gospel nor even to live in a Christian society. 
The discussion and ways of ministers, their 
preaching and modes of conducting worship at 
that period are as vivid in my recollection 
to-day as then, and I purpose to turn this to 
account in complying with your request. 

Keligious worship at that time, though 
modified, still retained much of the ancient 
spirit and something of the form. My father 
and the ministers of his age formed the con- 
necting link between the old and the new. 
Many of the old ministers, who were settled for 
life, and wore old ministerial wigs, cocked 
hats, small clothes, and bands, were still preach- 
ing, and frequently exchanged with my father, 
— Father Lancaster of Scarborough, Mr. Tilton 
and Mr. Eaton of Harpswell. Father Lan- 
caster would sometimes fall asleep in the pul- 
pit while the choir were singing the hymn 
before the sermon, for he was well-stricken 
with years. Ministers of a later date wore a 
queue and powdered their hair. My father in 



SPEECHES 279 

younger life wore his hair long, and it curled 
down his back and was powdered. He also 
retained the bands for a neck dress. I can 
just recollect when he exchanged breeches for 
loose pants. The old people, who were opposed 
to the innovation, called them sailor trousers, 
and said they did not become a servant of 
God, were got up to conceal spindle shanks, 
and the deacons of the First Parish and some 
others retained them. The sermons and 
prayers were somewhat curtailed, even by the 
old ministers, but were still of sufficient length. 
The hour-glass was no longer seen on the pul- 
pit, but was still used in families, schools, and 
by the toll-keeper at Vaughan's bridge. The 
deacons in the First Parish still sat before the 
pulpit, but the practice of deaconing the hymns 
was given up. Intentions of marriage were 
no longer cried in the church with the addition 
that if any person could show cause why they 
should not be carried into effect, to make it 
known, or else forever to hold their peace ; 
but publishments were posted in the porch of 
the meeting-house for all to read. Much im- 
portance was attached to the singing, and it 
was always performed by a full choir, as loud 
noise was by our forefathers deemed essential 



280 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

in public worship. At first there was no in- 
strument except the bass viol. The chorister, 
conscious of the dignity of his office, would 
rise with a solemn air, run up the scale, beat- 
ing time with his hand, and lift the tune. My 
father, who had been drum-major in the Con- 
tinental army, and was extremely fond of in- 
strumental music, introduced the cornet and 
clarinet, in addition to the bass viol, into the 
Second Parish choir. He likewise persuaded 
Mr. Edward Howe, of Groton, Massachusetts, 
to come and set up business in Portland on ac- 
count of his musical talent, and assisted him 
all he could, and Mr. Howe led the choir of the 
Second Parish for years, keeping up with the 
progress of the times. Difficulties with church 
choirs were as prevalent then as now. At one 
time the first hymn was read, but there was 
no response from the choir. My father, who 
was a good singer, immediately read the hymn, 
" Let those refuse to sing who never knew our 
God," and led off himself, and the congregation 
joined in. When the next hymn was read, the 
choir concluded to sing. 

There was no fire in the meeting-houses. 
The women carried foot-stoves that contained 
an iron dish filled with hot coals. The sexton 



SPEECHES 281 

was bound by written contract to keep a good 
rock-maple wood fire on the Sabbath in order 
that the people might have good coals with 
which to fill their foot-stoves in the morning 
and replenish them between meetings. Chil- 
dren suffered the most from cold feet, and 
would often cry with cold. I used to run my 
legs to the knees into my mother's muff and get 
my feet on her foot-stove and long for services 
to be done. My father used to say that when 
he could hear people all over the house strik- 
ing their feet together to quicken the circula- 
tion, he felt it was time to stop preaching, and 
indeed he seldom preached more than forty 
minutes, and often less. But many of the old 
ministers who exchanged with him had a 
method of dividing their sermons that to a boy 
with cold feet was extremely tantalizing. They 
would have six, eight, and often ten heads of 
discourse after which came " the improvement," 
the most excruciating of all. After a long 
time occupied in the application of what had 
preceded, the minister would say "lastly." 
Then all the younger portion of the audience 
would prick up their ears and handle their 
mittens in expectation of the close, but after 
this would come " finally," and on the heels 



282 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

of " finally " u to conclude/' and after " con- 
clude," u in short." There were few Sabbath- 
schools; religious instruction was in former 
days given to the children by means of the 
Westminster Catechism that was taught to 
children by their parents ; and at stated times 
in the year the ministers were accustomed to 
assemble all the children of the parish and 
catechise them. Parents who were not re- 
ligious, equally with others, taught their chil- 
dren the catechism that they might be able to 
answer the questions of the ministers and ap- 
pear as well as their companions. This method 
of instruction had fallen in a measure into 
disuse, and though Sabbath-schools had been 
substituted to take its place, they were not 
cherished or conducted as at present. No 
pains were taken to render them attractive. 
Some parents held on to both methods of re- 
ligious instruction upon the principle that there 
never could be too much of a good thing. The 
schools had little hold upon the hearts of the 
ministers of the church and were generally 
taught outside. The first Sabbath-school I 
attended was held in a schoolhouse that stood 
on the northeastern side of State Street. The 
late Mr. Cahoon was my teacher. The New 



SPEECHES 283 

Testament was the text-book. Children com- 
mitted hymns but took no part in the singing. 

There was a vein of austerity running 
through the relations that existed between 
parents and children. They were neither 
fondled nor pampered, but taught self-denial, 
to obey their parents, and reverence old age. 
In many families the children ate at a side 
table, as they were not supposed to be fitted 
by age or development to associate with their 
elders. 

In the province of labor there was no spe- 
cial adaptation of the implements of labor to 
the physical strength of children, nor in mat- 
ters of education any adaptation of studies or 
methods of teaching to their mental wants as 
at present, but children and youths used to a 
large extent the tools and books of their elders 
or waited till they grew up to them. Thus, 
in matters of religion, immediate effect was 
not expected either in relation to children or 
adults. It was not expected that a person 
would be converted till he was married and 
settled in life. 

The question will naturally arise in the 
minds of many, what was the result of such 
a mode and spirit of worship as to the pro- 



284 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

motion of vital godliness and the conversion 
of souls. I reply, there was but little fruit. 
The preaching was mostly argumentative and 
controversial or political — the conic sections 
of godliness. Ministers seemed to feel that 
their responsibility ended when they had faith- 
fully preached the truth and kept back noth- 
ing, and church members, when they attended 
the ordinances and kept the faith. 

The first great change for the better in this 
state of affairs was caused by the embargo, 
which crushed for a season and well-nigh ex- 
terminated the business interests of Portland. 
It brought those who had become giddy with 
more than twenty years of unexampled pros- 
perity to reflection. In proportion as their 
prospects in this life were blighted, they directed 
their attention to the attainment of more dur- 
able riches. The ministers of the gospel of all 
denominations took advantage of the changed 
condition of thought, and there was a great 
revival of religious interest throughout New 
England. Edward Payson, who was then in 
the prime of life and a colleague with my 
father, exerted himself to an extent that con- 
signed him to an early grave, and there was 
during his ministry a constant revival. In- 



SPEECHES 285 

stead of f ate, free-will, foreknowledge, absolute 
free-will, etc., people began to hear of Christ 
and Him crucified, the still small voice of the 
Spirit, and the danger of delay. The eyes of 
men, stirred to a new life, were now opened to 
perceive the great obstacles to the progress of 
religion and morality. 

The drinking customs of the day which had 
now reached a fearful extent, and African slav- 
ery and the discussions concerning it, caused 
a shaking of the dry bones seldom equalled ; 
for conscience, self-interest, and the law of 
God were pitted against each other. The 
main shaft that carried the wheels of business 
in Portland was the lumber trade, which con- 
sisted in transporting lumber to the West 
Indies and bartering it for molasses, a large 
portion of which was made into rum that 
went all over the country. There was new 
rum for poor people, and West India rum for 
those in better circumstances. I have seen 
my mother, as often as Parson Lancaster ex- 
changed with my father, mix Holland gin and 
loaf sugar and warm it for him before he 
went into the pulpit and after he came out. 
I once went with my father to a funeral in 
Beaver (now Brown) Street, and a decanter 



286 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

of liquor and glasses were set on the coffin. 
At eleven o'clock on each day the bell would 
ring, the masons come down from the ladders, 
the joiners drop their tools, and all would par- 
take of rum, salt-fish, and crackers. This 
great obstacle, in a measure taken out of the 
way, led to the development of a spirit of 
Christian enterprise which I leave to abler 
tongues and pens to describe. 



AT BOWDOIN COMMENCEMENT, 
JUNE 25, 1890 

[Among papers especially treasured by Mr. 
Kellogg was found the following letter : — 

" Brunswick, Maine, May 22, 1890. 

"Dear Mr. Kellogg: The coming Commencement 
will be the fiftieth anniversary of your graduation. It is 
our custom to call first on a representative of the class of 
fifty years ago ; and as goes his speech, so goes the dinner. 
Now you are not only the natural representative of the class 
of fifty years ago, but one of the most widely known and uni- 
versally beloved of all the graduates of our whole hundred 
years. So we shall look to you for the response from the 
Class of '40. You must not fail us. If you do not report 
yourself present at the formation of the procession in the 
morning, we shall send a sheriff and posse after you. The 
Congressmen will not be here this year. The success of the 
dinner depends on your coming, and giving us such a send- 
off as you only can give to a crowd of Bowdoin College boys. 
It will be a sad day for Bowdoin College if there shall ever 
be a generation of students who know not Elijah Kellogg. 
" Faithfully yours, 

"William DeW. Hyde."] 

Me. President, Gentlemen, Members 
or the Alumni, and Classmates : It is 

287 



288 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

fifty years this autumn since I presented my- 
self, a sedate and diffident youth, between the 
two maple trees that relieved the monotony 
of this then arid and barren college yard, and, 
like friendship and misfortune, flung their 
shadows over the steps of Massachusetts 
Hall, and sued for admittance to Bowdoin 
College. With that humility which was an 
inherent attribute of youth in that bygone 
day, I requested an inhabitant of this vil- 
lage to point out to me the president of 
the college, and I gazed upon the great 
man with that anxiety and solicitude, inspired 
by the belief that my fate and that of my 
companions lay in his clutches. Since that 
period, since that comparatively short period, 
what changes have taken place ! This barren 
college yard, across which students were wont 
to hurry, has been transformed into a beauti- 
ful and attractive campus where they are now 
prone to linger and repose and sport. This 
then barren college yard, where Professors 
Smyth and Newman struggled desperately to 
prolong the existence of a few sickly trees, 
and died in the struggle, is now adorned 
by that beautiful Memorial Hall, created by 
the hands of a progressive age, and transmit- 




Elijah Kellogg at Seventy-seven. 

1890. 



SPEECHES 289 

ting to other generations the virtues and the 
memory of those sons of Bowdoin who were 
true to their country in the hour of her peril. 

But in other respects what changes ! 
Every president but two, a great portion of 
the overseers, the trustees, and alumni, every 
instructor, every teacher, every tutor, almost 
every person in any way connected with this 
college, from the treasurer to the janitor, and 
the woman who took care of the rooms, have 
all passed away. I can reckon my own sur- 
viving classmates on my fingers, and I stand 
here to-day like an old tree among the 
younger growth, from whose trunk the bark 
and leaves have fallen, and whose roots are 
drying in the soil. Then I could stand where 
the roads divide that lead to Mere Point and 
Maquoit, and hear the roar of the Atlantic in 
one ear and that of the falls of the Andros- 
coggin in the other. To-day I have not heard 
a word, except the two words "Bowdoin 
College." 

But there is no decrepitude of the spirit. 
Moons may wax and wane, flowers may 
bloom and wither, but the associations that 
link the student to his intellectual birthplace 
are eternal. 



290 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

There is an original tendency in the human 
mind which is the foundation of the desire for 
property. We all naturally crave something 
that is our own. What lover of nature wants 
to be where everybody has been? It is an 
instinctive tendency. We want our own land, 
however limited ; our own house, however 
humble ; our own books, however few in num- 
ber. Who, I pray you, wants to " wear his 
heart upon his sleeve for daws to peck at/' 
or be a member of a fraternity that is like 
an unfenced common for every slimy thing to 
creep and to crawl over ? It is this instinc- 
tive feeling which has from the beginning 
been at the foundation of all fraternities of 
every description, and they have striven to 
realize this idea, though they have not always 
accomplished it. This principle of limitation 
strengthens by concentrating every associa- 
tion and every feeling of the human mind, 
just as the expansive gases derive their ter- 
rific power from compression, and liquids, by 
concentration, gain in pungency what they 
lose in bulk. It is this which imparts such 
magic power to the college tie, because the 
college tie brings and binds together, at a 
period when friendships are most ardent and 



SPEECHES 291 

sincere, and feelings are most plastic, those 
who have separated themselves to intermeddle 
with all knowledge, and unites them in the 
pursuit of all that can honor God, develop the 
intellect, or benefit mankind. 

It introduces them at once into a fraternity 
composed, not merely of their own classmates 
and contemporaries, but of all the gifted and 
the good who still live in their works, and by 
whose labors they profit. The longer a man 
lives, the broader his views, and the more he 
experiences of men and things, the more he 
feels his obligation to his Alma Mater, to the 
nourishment he drew from her bosom, to the 
formative influences with which she surrounded 
him. Brethren, it was here we were intellect- 
ually born and bred. 

" 'Twas here our life of life began, 
The spirit felt its dormant power. 
'Twas here the youth became the man, 
The bud became the flower." 

The longer a man lives the more sensible 
he becomes of this obligation, and though it is 
impossible to repress a feeling of sadness when 
we visit the rooms and tread the floors where 
those swift-winged hours flew, and where we 



292 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

decipher the almost obliterated inscriptions, 
the names on the walls, names of those most 
dear to us, of those whose step kept time and 
whose hearts throbbed in unison with ours, 

" Who the same pang and pleasure felt, 
At the same shrine of worship knelt, 
And knew the same celestial glow 
That young and burning spirits know 
In the bright dreaming days of youth, 
Ere visions have been chilled by truth, 
And feelings gushed without control 
Of those cold fetters fashioned by 
That wayward king, society." 

And yet these considerations are modified 
by the reflection that they have nobly used 
the training that they here received, and are 
exerting influences that survive them, and 
have sown seed that shall be the increment 
of future harvests. 

I feel grateful that a lengthened life and 
an intimate acquaintance with the history and 
former faculty and the students of this col- 
lege have enabled me to appreciate the prog- 
ress of this institution for the last fifty years. 
For more than forty years circumstances have 
so ordered it that I have been brought into 
most intimate relations with the faculty and 



SPEECHES 293 

students of Bowdoin College. They have 
loved me and I have loved them. I have 
been brought into contact with these young 
men at a period in their moral and mental 
development when a youth will tell his whole 
heart, all his best plans, aspirations, and diffi- 
culties to an older person who he feels under- 
stands him and whom he knows he can trust ; 
and in the light of this experience, I do not 
hesitate to say that this college never stood 
so high in moral and intellectual work as it 
does this day. In 1838 I listened to the 
farewell address of President Allen to the 
faculty and students of this college and 
the inhabitants of this town, in which he 
declared that this college was a seething tub 
of iniquity, and he could not in conscience 
advise any parent to send a child here. Mr. 
President, do you think you could in con- 
science make such a declaration ? And what- 
ever may be thought, I say whatever may 
be thought of the good judgment of the 
reverend gentleman, it cannot be denied that 
he had good grounds for his assertion. 

There were at that time a great many pious 
and devoted students in college, as many, 
probably, in proportion to the number, as 



294 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

have ever been since. They had a praying 
circle, and the college church kept up their re- 
ligious meetings and attended them promptly. 
They lived, the greater portion of them, de- 
voted and consistent lives, and from time to 
time they received the influence of the Divine 
Spirit, and many strong men were brought to 
Christ and fitted for usefulness; but in gen- 
eral they had the fire all to themselves and it 
warmed no one else. The good went with the 
good, and the bad with the bad. There was 
a line of demarcation between them. I did 
what I could to break it, came very near ship- 
wreck, and shall carry the scars of it to my 
grave, but I am glad I made the attempt. 
Those were not the methods which the chang- 
ing times required. The Christian Associa- 
tion which has superseded them, built on a 
broader basis, meets the requirements of to- 
day, and does more to promote the morality 
of the college. Things have broadened since 
I was a boy. Why, when I was a young man, 
it was thought that a person couldn't be con- 
verted till he was married and settled in life. 
Another thing which has added strength to 
this college and been fruitful in respect to 
morality is the attention that has been paid 



SPEECHES 295 

of late to athletic exercises. This outlet for 
superfluous energy has more to do with the 
good order and subordination of the institu- 
tion than most people are wont to imagine. 
Boys that in my day would have been playing 
cards in their room for a hot supper and fix- 
ings at the Tontine, are now pulling an oar 
or playing baseball or lawn-tennis, and the 
germs of mischief ooze out in copious drops 
of perspiration. And when night comes, 
instead of reveling in shirt-tail processions, 
making night hideous, they are contented to 
sit down with their books or go to bed. 

It has always been a vexed problem how to 
give students exercise. Every man of com- 
mon sense knows that students, in order to 
accomplish anything, must have exercise. 
Andover built a large building, bought tools 
and stock, hired a skilled foreman, and was 
going to set the students to work. They 
wasted so much lumber and brought the 
institution so heavily in debt that they were 
obliged to sell out and turn the building into 
a house for Professor Stone. 

I recall the military drill here. It was all 
very well for a while. But all couldn't be 
officers. Nobody was content to be dragooned 



296 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

by an army officer. But lawn-tennis, base- 
ball, football, and the gymnasium fill the bill. 
The students are proud of their gymnasium, 
and I know from personal experience that, 
during the last eight years, those who have 
excelled in athletic exercises have also ex- 
celled in rank. 

Now I believe that this college has taken a 
new departure, and I believe there is a future 
for it from the fact that the alumni take more 
interest in the college than they used to take, 
and because there are so many poor students 
connected with it. Poor students are the sal- 
vation of a college. I know young men who 
worked their way through college who are 
to-day its benefactors. I worked my way 
through college with a narrow axe, and when 
I was hard up for money, I used to set the 
college fence afire and burn it up, and the 
treasurer would hire me to build another 
one. Let the young man who has to help 
himself thank God, keep his powder dry, and 
take to his bosom the old motto : " Per 
angusta ad augusta" 



AT CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION OF 
BOWDOIN COLLEGE, JUNE 28, 1894 

My love, Mr. President, for this college was 
inherited. I drew it in with my mother's 
milk, and was taught it at my father's knees. 
He was one of its first trustees, proposed its 
first president, and sold the lands the proceeds 
of which, after almost interminable delays, 
built Massachusetts Hall. Judge Freeman of 
the trustees, a most excellent and influential 
man and ardently attached to the college, was 
naturally very cautious, and that trait was now 
much increased by age ; it seemed on account 
of his influence as if a building would never 
be erected. It was at length moved at a 
meeting of the Boards that my father be 
appointed and empowered to sell the college 
lands. He accepted the trust on condition 
that they would put Judge Parker of Massa- 
chusetts with him to draw the writings. This 
being done, he said, " Gentleman, these lands 
will all be sold within a year." Judge Free- 

297 



298 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

man, stroking his face, as was his habit when 
excited, exclaimed : " They will ruin us. They 
will ruin us." " I," observed another of the 
trustees, " want to be ruined ; I had rather die 
at once than moulder away by dry rot." The 
lands were sold within the specified time, a 
building was then erected, and President 
McKeen inaugurated. Seldom has the hand 
of Divine Providence been more clearly mani- 
fested than in the origin and growth of this 
college. From its inception it secured in its 
presidents, professors, trustees, and overseers 
men who had the interests of morality and 
sound learning more at heart than their own 
ease or emolument. The abilities of its teach- 
ers and their reputation would have at any 
time procured for them more eligible positions 
if ease, compensation, and reputation had alone 
been consulted. They were self-denying men ; 
they loved the college and labored and denied 
themselves for its good. 

I was absent from college but three years 
when I returned and settled at Harpswell. I 
had a great deal to do with the college, was 
in intimate relations with the professors and 
their families, and had opportunity to appre- 
ciate their real worth. They were not merely 



SPEECHES 299 

residents of the community, but useful citizens 
and a public blessing. The high school owes its 
origin in a great degree to Professor Smyth. 
All the neighboring ministers were under more 
or less obligation to them. They attended 
funerals, supplied destitute churches, and in 
the weekly religious meetings of the village 
were a power for good. I have worked weeks 
with Professor Smyth, setting out trees on the 
campus which he bought and paid for. Pro- 
fessor Upham gave the greater part of his 
property to the college. He for two years 
supplied the pulpit of the Congregational 
church at Harpswell, and but for his efforts 
it would not have been in existence now. In 
the last term of my senior year he came to 
Andover and told me if I did not go to 
Harpswell, God would curse me as long as I 
lived. I do not know what the Lord would 
have done, but I have found that obedience is 
sweet and not servitude. 

Those worthy men inspired the students with 
like sentiments. Every class made great sacri- 
fices to purchase valuable standard works for 
their society libraries. The literary spirit was 
by no means in abeyance in those days. The 
best minds in college took as much interest in 



300 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

preparing themselves for debates and other 
parts in the two societies as they did for a 
Junior and Senior Exhibition. The students 
dammed the glen at Paradise Spring and made 
a pond. They also terraced the sides of the 
glen and constructed seats of turf , and addresses 
and poems were delivered there to most appre- 
ciative audiences. Sam Silsbee flung Albion 
Andrew into Paradise Pond, and he was so fat 
that he floated like a bladder. Sam was not 
aware that he was laying sacrilegious hands 
upon the future governor of Massachusetts any 
more than I was aware that Melville Fuller 
would be Chief Justice of the United States, 
when with care on his young brow and the 
fire of a great purpose in his eye, I marked 
him laying the foundation of future renown. 
Were there not poets in those days who pos- 
sessed the vision and the faculty divine ? Did 
not President Allen have a hat that was woven 
of grass that grew on Mount Parnassus ? Did 
not John B. Soule compose a Latin ode upon 
a moth that flew into a candle which in the 
opinion of the class compared favorably with 
those of Horace ? And has he not since that 
time by more elaborate efforts proved that 
the child is father of the man ? How can I 



SPEECHES 301 

ignore a most pathetic effusion, on the death 
of an unfortunate cat that was crushed beneath 
a woodpile, written in the style of President 
Allen ? 

" Poor puss, and wast thou to death squeezed 
Beneath the weighty pile ? 
How must thy life have been outsneezed 
The agonizing while ! 
And, pussy, didst thou found it hard 
To part from kittens young ? 
For if thou'dst not a feeling heart, 
Thou hadst a feline one. 
Now, pussy, since thou art up-used, 
From door thee I'll outthrow, 
Thy body from thy mind unscrewed, 
To bleach beneath the snow. 
By hill and valley, dale and stream, 
The rats shall frisk and frolic, 
Crying ' Hurrah, we'll lick the cream 
Since pussy's got the colic' " 

During the latter part of President Allen's 
administration discipline was lax ; intemper- 
ance prevailed to a fearful extent in college as 
it did in the community. There were no rail- 
roads, and people came to Commencement and 
remained in Brunswick till the close. It was 
then customary for the graduating class to 
set tables in the rooms in which were liquors 
and other refreshments, and entertain their 



302 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

relatives and friends. At one time there 
was a room in North College in which a 
table was set with liquors and other refresh- 
ments, and straw was put upon the floor, and 
over the door a sign bearing the inscription, 
u Entertainment for Man and Beast." But 
even at that time there was a body of stu- 
dents composing the college church or Pray- 
ing Circle, as it was termed, the greater 
number of whom were persons of the most 
decided religious character. They held meet- 
ings and taught Sabbath-schools in different 
parts of the town, and were in sympathy with 
every good work ; but between them and the 
majority of the other students there was a line 
of demarcation. Each party travelled their 
own road, and they had little to do with one 
another. But after 1838 there was a change ; 
a deep religious interest began and continued, 
the herald of a better day. Since that day 
Christian associations have exerted a salutary 
influence, and, like the Gulf Stream sending 
its warm current through the cold waters of 
the Atlantic, have imparted a more genial 
tone to the intercourse of the students. Ath- 
letic exercises have likewise laid a strong hand 
upon much of the time formerly devoted to 



SPEECHES 303 

more questionable recreations. Although the 
present furor in these sports has its dangers 
and the matter is liable to abuse, yet they fill 
the bill as nothing else ever did, and when 
pruned of their excrescences will become a 
power for good. Young men of real stamina, 
however full of blue veins and vitriol and how- 
ever enamoured of baseball, football, and boat- 
ing, and hurried to extremes for the moment, 
will yet recall and heed the words of Cicero 
who represents Milo of Crotona, the greatest 
athlete of ancient times, who could kill an ox 
with a blow of his fist, shedding idiotic tears 
as in his old age he looked upon his flabby 
skin and shrunken muscles, and wept because 
he could no longer contend and conquer in the 
Olympic games. Milo had muscle and nothing 
else. May it never be said of Bowdoin stu- 
dents that they have muscle and nothing else, 
and certainly not that they are destitute of it. 
Great was the change when President 
Woods succeeded President Allen. Never 
will the upper classes of that year forget the 
day of his inauguration. When he took his 
stand upon the platform to deliver his address, 
he laid upon the table before him a manu- 
script as thick as a three-inch plank. A 



304 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

riband was passed through it, dividing it into 
equal parts. But he never looked at it from 
the beginning to the close, except that, when 
halfway through, he opened at the riband but 
made no use of it. For more than two hours, 
without the hesitation of a moment or the 
lapse of a word, he held that audience spell- 
bound. I have never known the man who 
could produce the impression — and a perma- 
nent one — upon a wild boy that he could. 
There are many living, distinguished and be- 
loved, and many here present who will never 
forget their obligations to Leonard Woods. 

For a poor boy smitten with the love of 
knowledge to work his way through college 
was once a formidable task. The only meth- 
ods of doing it were keeping school in the long 
winter vacation, manual labor as they went 
along, or hiring money with the result of being 
burdened with debt at graduation. The Edu- 
cation Society could do but little, and there 
were no scholarships as at present. I walked 
seventy-five miles over the frozen ground after 
Christmas to the Penobscot to keep school, and 
back again through the mud in March, because 
I was too poor to ride ; and I had to hire a 
watch in Brunswick to keep school with. 



SPEECHES 305 

The commonwealth justly expects much 
from the students and alumni who enjoy the 
advantages both literary and pecuniary now 
accorded. 

"Ye are marked men, ye men of Dalecarlia." 

The associations of this day come home 
with peculiar force to the minds of those 
who have been familiar with the history and 
watched the progress of this college from the 
day it was a mere shrub, with bare shade suf- 
ficient to cover its own roots, to this glad hour 
when they rejoice that they are permitted to 
look upon it as a massive tree, on whose broad 
foliage the sunlight loves to linger and the 
dew lieth all night on its branches. Withered 
hands are lifted in benediction : the tremulous 
accents of age join the universal jubilee. They 
will depart cheered by the assurance that when 
the dial plate shall be taken off from this great 
clockwork of the universe, and in eternity we 
behold its secret wheels and springs, it will be 
found that those who, at this seat of science, 
have separated themselves that they might in- 
termeddle with all knowledge, its officers and 
its benefactors, have lived, labored, endured, 
not for themselves, but for their country and 
their God. 



LOVE 

[Delivered at " Donation Party," Harpswell, September 18, 
1894] 

Love, my friends and neighbors, is some- 
thing that defies definition and resents analy- 
sis. It is not possible to communicate the 
perception of it to one who has never expe- 
rienced it. It must be felt in order to be 
known. It is likewise the most permanent 
of all the qualities of the mind. Anger, how- 
ever violent, expires with the occasion that 
called it forth. Grief, however bitter and 
heart-rending, time will remove, and it will 
blunt the sting of sorrow. But love is inex- 
haustible and grows by what it feeds upon. 
Here is the father of a young family. He is 
returning at night from his work. As he 
approaches the door, a little one who can just 
go alone espies him. With cries of delight he 
runs to meet his parent, till, out of breath and 
strength, he falls exhausted into his father's 
outstretched arms. The happy parent raises 

306 




Elijah Kellogg at Eighty. 

1893. 



SPEECHES 307 

the little one and kisses him. When he has 
kissed that child a dozen times, does he not 
want to kiss him a dozen times more ? Thus 
affection grows by what it feeds upon and is 
inexhaustible. It will do or endure more for 
the welfare of its object than any other fac- 
ulty. You may hire a man to labor for you, 
you may force him to obey you, but not to love 
you. No power on earth can do that. On 
the other hand, does he love you, that love 
will cause him to do more for you than all 
other motives put together, and the more he 
does the more will he delight to do, because 
love tells nothing is lost that a good friend 
gets. 

There are people before me to-night whom 
I began to love forty years ago. Do I love 
them less ? Is the affection worn out ? No ; 
it is worn in. Then it was in the bark, but 
now it has got into the heart of the tree. 

Here, also, are the children and grandchil- 
dren of those who are not, for God has taken 
them, and the affection I bore their parents 
clings to the children. It is not worn out, 
because love is stronger than death. Many 
waters cannot quench love, neither can floods 
drown it. Or if a man would give all the 



308 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

substance of his house for love, it would 
utterly be contemned. It is love that 
makes home, love that makes friends in the 
world, love that makes heaven, for God 
is love. 

What has brought all these friends together 
to-night ? They did not come to get, but to 
give, not with their hands shut up, but with 
both hearts and hands wide open. They have 
come to gratify their feelings of neighborly 
friendship and affection ; for if they did not 
thus gratify those feelings, they would not 
enjoy what they had left. Ought I not to 
be grateful to be the recipient of so much 
good-will, kindness, and neighborly affection ? 
I trust it will be an encouragement to render 
me more faithful to your souls' best interests, 
to work for you and seek your good ; to pray 
that God, who loves the cheerful giver, will 
reward and bless you. 

There were never two persons in this world 
who loved each other but wanted and loved 
to eat together, and there were never two 
enemies who did. There were never two 
persons who loved each other, loved God, 
but who loved and wanted to pray together. 
We have eaten together; we have enjoyed 



SPEECHES 309 

each other's society; recalled the feelings of 
other and happier days, before toil had stiff- 
ened our limbs, sorrow entered our hearts, or 
tears trembled on our eyelids ; now let us pray 
together before we separate. 



THE DELUDED HERMIT 

[Delivered at " Donation Party," October 1, 1895] 

lis" the ancient days, after the early Chris- 
tian fathers who succeeded the Apostles had 
departed, religion degenerated into supersti- 
tion. There arose under the influence of the 
Roman Catholic Church a class of hermits, 
anchorites, and devotees who thought that 
heaven and holiness were to be obtained by 
torturing and denying the flesh ; that by 
secluding themselves from society, by fast- 
ings and watchings, they might escape temp- 
tation and sin and live nearer to God and 
merit the divine favor. 

In the North Sea are a group of islands 
belonging to Denmark, sixteen in number, 
called the Faroe Isles, some of which are of 
considerable size and inhabited, others mere 
patches of rocks and turf. Upon one of these, 
which is a mere sand spit flung up by the sea, 
a hermit had taken up his residence. His 

310 



SPEECHES 311 

dwelling was built of the stones of the place, 
and the entrance was so low that he went in 
and came out on his knees. When the door 
was closed, it was lighted by an opening in 
the top which permitted a view of the sky, of 
the sun when far advanced in the heavens, 
of the moon and the stars, but not of the 
earth. Here this pious but deluded saint 
passed his days in prayer, meditation, fre- 
quent fasting, and reading the Bible. His 
food was brought to him by the inhabitants 
of the neighboring islands who greatly re- 
vered him for his holiness and sought his 
prayers for themselves and their household. 
He imagined that if he could see only the 
heavens, he should become less earthly; that 
by cutting himself off from the sins, the cares, 
and the labors of worldly and sinful men and 
being alone with God, he should make great 
advance in holiness. Poor deluded man ! If, 
when he looked upon the heavens, the sun, the 
moon, and the stars, he had only taken a rea- 
sonable and scriptural view of the purpose for 
which they were created, he would have per- 
ceived that it was for the good of others they 
were created, to declare the glory of God to a 
universe, to cause grass to grow for cattle, and 



312 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

herbs for the use of man ; that for six thou- 
sand years they had been holding to all the 
nations of the earth their high and perpetual 
discourse of the wisdom, power, and goodness 
of God, who openeth His liberal hand and satis- 
fieth the desire of every living thing. Such 
reflections would have taught him that if, 
instead of spending his life and energies, and 
consuming soul and body, in prayers and medi- 
tations that began and ended in themselves, he 
had taken a portion of his time to keep the fire 
burning on his own hearthstone, and then gone 
forth among those islanders and told them 
of God and Christ and the duties they owed, 
given them the benefit of and shared with 
them his wisdom and holiness, and taught 
them to love God and each other, it would 
have been more acceptable to God, and in 
blessing he would have been blessed. This 
mistaken man imagined he was crucifying 
sin when he was only crucifying the natural 
affections and sympathies God had given him 
to be gratified for his own good and that of 
others. Man was not made to live in a state 
of isolation, but in fellowship with his kind. 
The human heart craves sympathy just as 
naturally as the vine stretches its tendrils to 



SPEECHES 313 

clasp some friendly prop, and, failing to reach 
it, droops and withers and bears no fruit. He, 
who is the centre of many loving hearts, 
whose interests, joys, and sorrows are his and 
his theirs, is stronger and happier than he who 
treads the brier-planted path of life alone, with 
no one to lean upon and share the burden or the 
conflict with him. We were made to find our 
happiness in the happiness of others. When 
is a gift valuable ? When it is a part of the 
heart of him who bestows it. That which 
makes the gifts I receive upon occasions like 
this of priceless value to me is that they come 
from those with whom I have lived in love 
and sympathy so long that they have be- 
come part of myself. The Saviour has said 
it is more blessed to give than to receive. It 
is more blessed to give than to receive. It is 
more gratifying to be able to bestow favors 
than to be obliged to receive them. It is 
more like our Maker. He never receives any- 
thing, for all things are His. He is the uni- 
versal giver. . . . May He who gives us all 
things reward you in your persons and in your 
households, and grant you that which He sees 
is best for your happiness both here and here- 
after. 



HOME 

[Delivered at " Donation Party," October 19, 1897] 

The sweetest word that ever trembled on 
human lips is the word " home." It em- 
braces and concentrates in itself the germs of 
a thousand forces of happiness, power, and 
progress yet to be developed from it. So long 
as man wanders, and, like the savage, merely 
gathers what grows of itself from the soil, or 
captures the fish of the streams, the birds of 
the air, and the beasts that roam the forests, 
he makes no progress ; he bestows no labor 
upon, and therefore takes no interest in, that 
abode which he is to abandon to-morrow. It 
is only when he has a permanent dwelling 
and produces something from the earth that 
progress, happiness, and the home relation 
begin. Home is the place where character 
is built, where sacrifices to contribute to the 
happiness of others are made, and where love 
has taken up its abode. Love is the strongest 
passion of our natures and finds its happiness 

3H 



SPEECHES 315 

in sacrificing for its object ; the parent for the 
child, the child for the parent, the sister for 
the brother. In this relation they are in the 
best possible position for moral and intellec- 
tual development ; they stimulate and call out 
each other's powers, energies, and affections. 

Infinite wisdom has declared, " It is not 
good for man to be alone." There is not a 
more unsightly or unprofitable tree than a 
white pine growing alone. It is a mass of 
knots, knobs, short-jointed, crooked, and wind- 
shaken, — in short, a scrub. The lumbermen 
in contempt call it a bull pine. But put a 
thousand of them together as near as they can 
grow. What a change ! As you enter that 
majestic cathedral no sunbeam can pierce, and 
look up at those heights, — trees straight as an 
arrow seventy feet to a limb, — you almost feel 
like uncovering in reverence. Thus with the 
family relation. The happiest homes are those 
the members of which are frequently called 
to sacrifice something or to deny themselves 
something for the others' comforts and happi- 
ness. It is this that sweetens home. It is 
those who bear the burdens of life together, 
relying upon and trusting in each other, who 
get the most out of life, bear its trials without 



316 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

being soured by them, and rear children who 
arise and call them blessed — children that 
have real manhood — who can look danger 
in the eye without quailing and grapple to 
severe tasks without wilting, and are nobody's 
servants. 

It is evident that home is not mere locality, 
that it is not defined by metes and bounds. 
From Gibraltar to Archangel, from Calcutta 
to the frozen seas, there are homes. One 
principle, one fruit-bud produces them all. 
Home is not a thing that can be bought or 
sold in the market. You may buy a home- 
stead or a house, you may perhaps buy a wife, 
but you cannot buy a woman's love. Costly 
furniture, rich dresses, retinues of servants, 
and luxurious dishes do not make homes. It 
is not the residence but the affection of the 
occupants that constitutes the. home. Those 
who are united in the bonds of a true affection 
behold themselves reflected in each other, and 
each is to the other as another self. In the 
confidence of love there is repose. 

My friends and neighbors, this assembly is 
made up of those who have been reared and 
have reared others in homes where parental 
love and filial affection were the mainsprings 



SPEECHES 317 

of action and the foundation of charitable and 
friendly acts. The desire to share with others 
the gifts a kindly Providence bestows on our- 
selves is bred in the atmosphere of home. All 
the sweet charities of life are but the overflow 
of these feelings and sympathies born and 
bred at the domestic hearthstone. 

I thank you, my friends and neighbors, for 
the gifts of affection bestowed this night, and 
may the blessing of God rest upon yourselves, 
your children, and your homes. 



SERMONS 



THE PRODIGAL'S RETURN 

Text: Luke xv. 18, 20. "/ will arise and 
go to my father" " But when he ivas yet a 
great way off, his father saw him, and had 
compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and 
kissed him" 

The Saviour, by a beautiful and affecting 
story, illustrates the natural and inevitable re- 
sult of a sinful course, a course of ingratitude 
and disobedience to God. We have placed 
before us the life of a Hebrew patriarch. In 
that land now so barren beneath the curse of 
God and the curse of a despotic government, but 
once so full of beauty and blossoming, when 
the Chosen People clothed its now barren 
mountain peaks with clambering vines and its 
valleys with waving grass and grain, dwelt a 
Hebrew, a righteous man among the kindred 
of his people, to whom God had given goodly 
land, and flocks and herds in abundance, whose 
tents stretched far over the plains, and who 

321 



322 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

had servants born in his house. This man had 
two sons, one of whom was much older than 
the other. It was a pleasant household ; the 
father was kind and affectionate to his ser- 
vants and to the poor, — a just man, fearing 
God and tenderly attached to his children. 

As the two brothers were different in their 
age, so were they in their dispositions. The 
elder son was sober, industrious, and found in 
the care of the flocks and the quiet enjoy- 
ments of rural life enough to occupy and in- 
terest him. The father could put confidence 
in him, could go away from home and leave 
all his business to his care, sure that it would 
be completed as if he himself were present. 
But though sober, industrious, and trustworthy, 
and held by the restraints of his education, 
yet he was not of an affectionate and generous 
nature, but penurious and severe in his temper, 
and much more feared and respected than be- 
loved by his servants and his equals. But the 
younger son was the very opposite. He was 
full of life and energy, but fickle and restless, 
and directed his energies to no good purpose. 
He cared nothing for business nor for cattle. 
He would not remain at home, but wandered 
from tent to tent and from vineyard to vine- 



SERMONS 323 

yard and into the distant city ; the farm life 
was dull and distasteful to him. His father 
could put no trust in him. If so be that his 
father went from home and left him in charge 
of the flocks and the servants, he was sure to 
find on his return that the flocks had strayed, 
that some of them had been lost or devoured 
by the wolves, or to find his son frolicking with 
the servants instead of directing their labor. 
Thus while he could trust the elder son with 
everything, he could trust the younger with 
nothing, and must always watch him with con- 
stant anxiety. 

Yet, with all his faults, the younger son was 
generous and affectionate, keen to perceive 
and understand, and of great determination to 
accomplish when he was so minded. The 
father often said to himself : " Oh, that my son 
would only do well ! How much comfort and 
honor would he be to me ! And how much 
good he might accomplish ! " Indeed, it 
seemed ofttimes that the boy could not help 
his wrong-doing; his wild, frolicsome, head- 
strong nature did so hurry him along. After- 
ward he would be sorry and even shed tears, 
and then go straightway and do the same 
again. Yet was the heart of the father more 



324 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

after this wild slip of a boy than after the 
other. 

There is in the heart of the parent a prin- 
ciple, not possible perhaps to be explained, 
which leads him to be more attached to and 
indulgent of the youngest child. There is 
something also in the very anxiety that the 
follies of the disobedient child occasion which 
calls out and fosters the affections of the parent 
more strongly for him than for the one who 
never gives that cause for uneasiness. The 
father also felt that the boy, though carried 
away by the impulses of his own imaginations 
and the romance of his nature and spirit, was 
after all of deeper affections and nobler im- 
pulses and greater capacity than the other son, 
and had in him all the raw material of a noble, 
useful character, could this impetuous spirit 
and these burning impulses be subdued, not 
destroyed, and these energies wisely directed. 
Many a bitter tear he shed, and many a prayer 
he put up to God for this child of his love and 
his old age. 

Matters went on in this way from bad to 
worse, the son becoming more and more dis- 
contented and uneasy. He listened to the 
tales of travellers who had been to distant 



SEBMONS 325 

lands and over the sea till his blood boiled, and 
he said to himself : " Shall I never see any- 
thing but these same hills and valleys ? Shall 
I never hear any discourse but about sheep 
and goats and fleeces of wool and cheese and 
barley ? Shall I never see anything of the 
great world of which I hear so much ? Must 
I stay here and milk goats when there is so 
much pleasure in the world to be enjoyed?" 
But now the time draws near when he shall 
be of age and his own master to go where 
he pleases. How he has been counting the 
days and reckoning up the time when he shall 
escape the restraints of home ! No sooner has 
the time arrived than he goes to his father 
and says to him, u Father, give me so much 
of your property as belongs to me, my share." 
He does not ask it as a gift, but as a debt 
which the father was under obligations to pay 
him. What right had he to demand anything 
of the father ? Had it been his elder brother 
who made this demand, who for many years 
after he was of age had labored hard and 
given the proceeds of his labor into the com- 
mon stock, there would have been some justice 
in the request. But this man had never done 
anything, had spent all he could get, had tried 



326 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

his father to the utmost, and now had the as- 
surance to come to his father and say : " Such 
a part of the property belongs to me. I want 
it, that I may go where I like and spend it as 
I wish." He had been so long in the habit of 
receiving from his father without effort of his 
own that he had come to consider it as a mat- 
ter of right. 

The father was pained by this ungrateful 
conduct, and the prodigal in his own heart felt 
ashamed of himself; in the bottom of his 
heart he loved and respected his father, but 
the love of pleasure, his lofty imaginations of 
the enjoyments to be found in the world of 
which he had read, heard, and dreamed so 
much, overpowered all other feelings. Could 
he only escape from the restraints of home 
and obtain money and means to gratify his 
desires, he should be happy. The father with- 
out any reproach divides his living and gives 
to him his share. He has never seen so much 
money before in his life. He is mad with 
joy. He thinks it will never be exhausted. 
He can hardly stop to bid good-by to his fam- 
ily, to his father whose heart aches to see this 
son of his love so glad to leave him. He takes 
his journey into a far country, just as far from 



SERMONS 327 

home as he can get, that his friends may not 
be able to know what he is doing or to trouble 
him with advice. He's had advice enough. 
He's had enough of home. He's going to try 
the world. Now he gives loose rein to all his 
lusts. He is soon surrounded by a circle of 
generous, jovial companions who would die 
for him; who every day pledge him health 
and happiness in the social glass ; who, so far 
from troubling him with advice, tell him he is a 
noble-hearted, princely fellow, and that every- 
thing he says and does is just right. How 
much better they are than his father's old, 
stupid, hard-working servants, or than his 
sober brother who thought only of sheep and 
begrudged him every cent, or than his father 
who was always telling him about the tempta- 
tions of life ! These noble, large-hearted fel- 
lows tell him money is made to spend and life 
is made to enjoy. 

While he is thus going onward in the pur- 
suit of pleasure, there comes a famine in the 
land. The prices of food rise to a fearful ex- 
tent. His money is exhausted, and he is 
amazed to find that his friends so kind begin 
to cool in their affections just in proportion 
as his means diminish. He finds that, so far 



328 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

from dying for him, their intention is to live 
upon him till he has nothing left and then re- 
proach him for his extravagance. The friend 
who begged him to make his house his home, 
just as though he were in his own father's 
house, intimates that times are very hard and 
every one must look out for himself. Hunger 
succeeds and rags. He who never had a seri- 
ous thought before is serious enough now. He 
who never bestowed a thought upon food or 
raiment must now find food or perish. In 
his necessity he resorts to the house of a 
farmer and with humble tone begs work. He 
who demanded of his father the property he 
had never earned a dollar of begs for the 
meanest employment that may keep him 
from starving! The farmer tells him that 
he may go into his fields and feed swine and 
eat a morsel with the servants in the kitchen. 
But the servants' fare is scanty, just sufficient 
to preserve fife. In the morning after taking 
his morsel, he goes with a heavy heart to his 
work. What a contrast ! He thought his 
home lonesome ; but where and what is he 
now ? All around him the land is scorched, 
the streams are dry, the trees leafless. He 
thought it hard to feed cattle ; he must now 



SERMONS 329 

feed hogs and beg for the privilege. Corn is 
so scarce that the swine can have only the 
husks, and he is so hungry that he would fain 
fill himself with the husks that the swine eat 
and no man gives unto him. Not one of all 
his former friends upon whom he has spent 
so much will give him a crust. 

He now comes to himself ; for the first time 
in his life he begins to think. He thinks of 
his kind old father, of his home where there 
is plenty. He says, " How many servants of 
my father have bread enough and to spare, 
and I perish with hunger ! " He says, " Shall 
I go home ? " Pride whispers : " Go home ? 
How can I look upon my father's face, on my 
brother who was always steady and industri- 
ous, and the old neighbors? My very looks 
will tell what I am, and where I have been, 
and what I have been doing. No, I won't 
go home. I can't go home. I will starve to 
death first." But it is much easier to talk 
about starving than it is to starve. Hunger 
and poverty are hard masters. Long is the 
struggle, terrible. At length he decides. " I 
will go while I have strength enough left to 
get there. ' I will arise and go to my father, 
and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned 



330 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

against heaven, and in thy sight, and am no 
more worthy to be called thy son.' ' And 
before his resolution has time to cool, he sets 
out on his journey. 

How truly and strikingly does this illus- 
trate the condition of one who wanders from 
God, and breaks the commands and deserts 
the house of his Father in heaven. A young 
man has grown up the inmate of a Christian 
family, but God has created him. His abili- 
ties of body and mind are from God. The 
property which he acquires, the ability to 
obtain it, and the opportunity and the time 
are God's ability, God's property, God's time. 
God declares that by using these in his ser- 
vice, he shall be happy in life, and in eternity 
receive the crown of glory. But these com- 
mands are not agreeable to him any more than 
the commands of the father were to the prodi- 
gal. He does not feel that his abilities and 
happiness are the gift of God, that he is under 
any obligation to his Father in heaven. In 
the flush of youth and health and hot blood, 
he feels that his strength is the strength of 
stones and his flesh brass. He says to his 
heavenly, as the prodigal to his earthly, 
Father, "Give me the portion of goods that 



SERMONS 331 

falleth to me." He feels that they are his 
own to use as he pleases, and thus he means 
to do ; though like the prodigal all the return 
he has ever made to God is to sin against Him. 
He loves not to think of God and eternity and 
Christ and sin. So, like the son in the parable, 
he goes into a far country. 

It is not literal space that is here meant; 
it is the distance of thought and feeling and 
affections and obedience. A man need not go 
out of his country to get far from God. At 
home, in the practice of all the outward duties 
of morality, regular in the attendance upon 
the sanctuary, he may yet live as far from 
God, as unwilling to submit to His commands, 
as though living in the most disorderly man- 
ner and in open sin. But whether on the 
ocean and in foreign lands he lives in sin 
and spends his substance in riotous living 
and looks everywhere among all forbidden 
pleasures for happiness, or on the land con- 
ceals a proud heart under a correct life, the 
result is that he is wretched, finds no peace. 
But now the Spirit of God touches his heart, 
leads him to reflect upon his true condition. 
He comes to himself. " I have broken the 
laws. I have grieved thy spirit. I deserve 



332 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

not the least of thy mercies. Do with me 
what seemeth good in thy sight." But then 
the thought arises, — and it is a bitter one, — 
" How can I go into the presence of that 
pure and holy God ? I, so vile a sinner, who 
have blasphemed His name ! Can such a 
sin be forgiven ?" 

Let us now consider the reception the son 
meets with. It is noontide, the time of 
burning heat. The cattle have sought the 
groves and the cool places of the hills, or 
are standing in the running streams beneath 
the tall reeds of the jungles. The goats seek 
the clefts of the rocks. In his tent door, be- 
neath the drooping branches of a sycamore 
that screen it from the sun, sits an aged patri- 
arch. On his face is that submissive look that 
neither tongue nor pen can describe, and that 
tells of high and holy communion with God. 
All around is peace inviting to repose. The 
faint breath of the dying breeze is gently 
rustling the leaves mingling with the hum 
of bees and the low murmur of a distant 
brook. The servants are sleeping in the 
shadow. But the old patriarch slumbers not 
with his slumbering servants. On his meek 
face is a troubled look, and now and then a 



SEBMONS 333 

silent tear steals down his cheek and falls 
upon his clasped hands. He is thinking of 
his absent, dearly loved, wayward child ! 
From the past he argues disastrously of the 
future. If so headstrong and reckless under 
the mild restraint of home, what will become 
of him when all check is removed ? Where 
is he, on sea or on land, this child of many 
prayers, many counsels, and bitter anxieties? 
Is he living in riot and folly, or is he already 
in suffering and distress, having not where to 
lay his head? Has he remembered any of 
the words of affectionate counsel that have 
been spoken to him ? Do his thoughts ever 
turn toward his home and the friends of 
his youth ? 

While the good father is thus sitting in his 
tent door praying for and thinking of his son, 
he sees a traveller far off upon the plains, so 
far that he just discerns him. He thinks, 
What if that should be my son ? So he steps 
out from the tent door and he looks long and 
eagerly, for the traveller comes slowly. But 
as he approaches, the father sees he is lame, 
footsore, and ragged, and his heart tells him : 
" This is just the condition in which I might 
expect my son to come. Ah, yes, that is 



334 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

he." And instantly the father runs to meet 
him. 

But what are the feelings of the prodigal as 
he draws near his native country and the old 
familiar features of the landscape strike his 
eye, and he sees in the distance his father's 
tent and the old trees under whose shadows 
he played when a boy ? How does he feel ? 
He does not feel one-half the resolution he 
did when he set out. His hope which at first 
sustained him begins to waver. He does not 
feel so much confidence now as he did when 
he was farther off. He begins to think of his 
rags, and the appearance he makes. He goes 
into the thicket and washes his ■ face in the 
brook and sleeks up his rags, and tries to make 
himself look decent and respectable to meet 
his father. But it is no use. Wherever he 
touches them they tear and finally fall off 
altogether, they are so rotten. At length he 
gives up in despair and says : " Well, I must 
go as I am, miserable wretch. I can't make 
myself any better ; the more I try the worse 
I look. There's nothing to make decency out 
of. Oh ! what will my father say to me, mis- 
erable ? God help me!" 

While he is thus talking and going along, 



SERMONS 335 

he sees his father in the tent door. " Oh," 
he says, "there is my father now ! " Then he 
stops right short in the road and looks down 
upon the ground, and is of a good mind to 
turn back and run away. But while he is 
hesitating, his father comes running and falls 
right on his neck and kisses him. And when 
he feels his old father's arms embracing him, 
his lips on his cheeks, and his tears on his 
neck, — oh, that is the worst of all. Then his 
heart is like to break with sorrow. He did 
not expect such treatment as this. If his 
father had only reproached him and said, " You 
vile, wicked boy, is this what you have come 
to ? " he could bear that better. But this 
kindness and love, — it quite breaks his heart. 
Then as soon as he can find voice for tears, 
he slips out of his father's arms and falls down 
on his knees and says: " i Father, I have sinned 
against heaven and before thee, and am no 
more worthy to be called thy son.' Don't call 
me son ; it breaks my heart. Make me thy 
servant, thy slave. Thou didst give me a 
goodly fortune which I never earned a dollar 
of. I have spent it all in folly, wasted thy 
substance, and disgraced thy name in foreign 
lands wherever I have been. I come here in 



336 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

wretchedness and rags to disgrace thee still 
more among the neighbors that know thee and 
thy goodness. Now, Father, let me be thy 
servant and serve thee, that I may earn thee 
something to atone for spending thy property 
and to show that I am really sorry." But 
the father will hear nothing of all this, and 
while he is speaking, cuts him short, saying 
to the servants who stand wondering, " Bring 
forth the best robe; take off his rags; wash his 
sores ; put a ring on his hands, and shoes on 
his feet : and bring hither the fatted calf and 
kill it ; for this my son was dead, and is alive 
again; he was lost, and is found. " 

Thus it is with the returning and repentant 
sinner. When he is far from God and is first 
drawn by the Spirit and assured by revelations 
of His mercy, he with considerable courage 
begins to seek and pray. But as he comes 
nearer and the light from the Excellent Glory 
grows stronger, and he sees more of his sins, 
he begins to doubt and to falter. But when God 
sees him thus afar off, sees a little love in his 
heart, He comes to meet him. He puts the 
robe of Christ upon him and gives to him the 
signet ring. 

My dear friends who are out of Christ, you 



SEBMONS 337 

are away from home. You are perishing. 
You have no food for your souls. You will 
die and be lost. Why sit here and perish 
in a foreign land ? Why feed on husks when 
you may have the choicest of the wheat? There 
is bread enough in your father's house. Many 
have gone there; more are on the road; others 
are coming. Won't you join the goodly com- 
pany ? Be resolute. Say, " I will." Be reso- 
lute as in the emergencies of life and business ; 
as when the lee shore is on one side and the 
gale on the other, and the seaman presses the 
canvas on the cracking spars and the strain- 
ing rigging, and the ship must carry it or be 
dashed upon the breakers; be resolute as when 
one sees his friend perishing in the water 
and says, " I will save him or die with 
him." 

My dear hearers, won't you say : " I will go. 
Nothing shall keep me back from my Saviour. 
Sins nor fears nor devils shall not stop me. I 
will try if I die. I know that God is merci- 
ful." 



WRESTING THE SCRIPTURES 

The Second Epistle of Peter, Chapter III, 
part of 16th verse. "In which are some 
things hard to he understood, which they that 
are unlearned and wis table ivrest, as they do 
also the other Scriptures, unto their own 
destruction" 

In" speaking from this text I might dilate 
upon the etymology of the words " unlearned " 
and "unstable." I might go on to observe 
that we must take the Bible as a whole and 
be taught of the Spirit in order to practice 
its plain truths and fathom its more difficult 
ones ; that as in the schools of human science 
the elementary text-books are simple while 
those designed for the advanced classes are 
more abstruse, thus the Bible contains many 
things which are now far beyond the reach of 
our minds, but to the comprehension of which 
we shall clamber up in eternity ; that in the 
Bible, the book of time and eternity, the two 

338 



SERMONS 339 

volumes are bound in one. Here we only 
read the preface and the introduction ; in the 
hereafter we shall peruse the whole of the 
book. 

But as these themes are frequently dis- 
cussed with more of learning than I can pre- 
sume to bring to the task, I shall pursue a 
less beaten path and content myself with 
observing that to " wrest " a thing signifies to 
wrench or twist it from its true position ; the 
very word implies violence. Thus to wrest a 
truth of Scripture signifies to detach it from 
the other truths of the system, to make it bear 
a false meaning, or to rob it of all meaning. 
A truth of Scripture thus wrested is no longer 
a truth, and is, therefore, of no avail to the 
man who has wrested it. It can do him no 
good ; he can no more get to heaven with it 
than a man who should tear a plank or a 
breast-hook from a ship could cross the Atlan- 
tic upon it. But as there are capillary veins 
and nerves in the bodily organization which 
discharge important though minute functions, 
and becoming diseased affect larger vessels 
and tissues, the consequence of which is sick- 
ness, and the result death, so there are methods 
of wresting the Scriptures less violent but not 



340 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

less fatal in their consequences. So great, my 
friends, is the evil bias of our nature and so 
deceitful is the human heart that we are prone 
to deceive ourselves, imagining that we are 
doing the will of God while we are doing 
our own will, obeying while we are wresting 
the Scriptures. This principle, following the 
example of Jesus of Nazareth, I will illustrate 
by a parable. 

In that never-to-be-forgotten year when the 
Pilgrim Fathers of New England rose up from 
their knees beneath the cliffs of Holland and 
embarked, there dwelt, where Derwent- Water 
pours its swift current into the black gorges 
of a lonely tarn, the descendant of a house, 
rich in ancestral memories and renowned in 
arms. Often had these massive walls rung 
to the battle clarion and its floors echoed to 
the tread of mail-clad men. But their descend- 
ant, though inheriting all the lofty heroism 
of his race, is, with a heart subdued by grace, 
a man of scholarly tastes, of peace, and of 
God. 

Amid the family circle where are the mother 
that reared, the wife that cherishes him, and 
the children who climb his knees, he lives, 
labors, and prays. " Surely," said some looker 



• SERMONS 341 

at the outward appearance, " this man does not 
serve God for naught. Has not God made a 
hedge about him and all that he has ? He 
would have his good things in both lives. Is 
he willing to sacrifice anything? Would he 
do anything with the Cross of Christ other 
than build it into the masonry of his castles 
or inscribe it upon the banner folds of his 
vassals ? " Let us see. 

He enters his library, a room of antique 
mould ; the roof groined and blazoned reflects 
a thousand hues of soft light from lamps of 
fretted gold. The thickly carpeted floor re- 
turns no echo to the footfall. View him as 
he stands beneath that mellow light : The 
face is the face of a prophet. The pure white 
brow, which no hardship has bronzed and 
around which the locks of early manhood are 
clustering, is as radiant with goodness as 
heaven's own light. The eyes suffused, not 
dimmed, by that mist which is the forerunner 
of tears, are turned toward heaven, while 
from their calm depths, pure as those through 
which wanders the light of stars, beam glances 
of gentle affection, a humility not assumed but 
ingrained like the summer flush upon the cheek 
of a ripened grape. The strong, firm lips 



342 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

are slightly parted with an expression of 
purpose and action; motionless they seem 
to utter, "Father, what wilt Thou have me 
to do?" 

Thoughtful he stands, then bows that stately 
head in deep contrition before God. He kneels, 
indeed, upon an embroidered cushion, but it is 
wet with tears. This man of noble blood and 
old descent, who sayeth "to this man 'Go/ 
and he goeth, and to another c Come,' and he 
cometh," grovels in the dust before his Maker. 
In his anguish he prostrates himself upon the 
floor; he cannot get low enough before his 
God. It is in his heart to embark with the 
Pilgrims, and he asks counsel of Heaven : 
" Father, wilt Thou that I leave these towers 
of my ancestors, moistened with their blood 
and beneath whose shadows their bones lie 
mouldering, and my mother now in the wane 
of life? Wilt Thou that I should take the 
wife of my bosom, my little ones reared in 
luxury and with tenderness, that I myself 
ever having lived and loved among the 
gifted and the great should go forth with my 
brethren to the wilderness ? Tell me, my 
Father, that it is my duty, and I will fling 
my whole estate into thy treasury as will- 



SERMONS 343 

ingly as ever prodigal wasted his in riotous 
living ; I will venture my life and the lives of 
those dearer to me than my own as readily as 
ever one of my warrior ancestors laid lance 
in rest to break a hedge of spears. Thou 
knowest that I love mother, wife, and chil- 
dren, comfort, refinement, wealth ; that life is 
sweet to the lusty and the young. Thou 
knowest how dear to me are these old trees 
beneath which in childhood I played, these 
swelling hills, these gently sloping vales, this 
fair stream whose gleam I love at the sunset 
hour to catch through green foliage and to 
whose murmur I love to listen, this chosen 
retreat filled with books that embalm the lore 
of centuries whither I may retire after drink- 
ing a thousand inspirations from without, and 
in silent prayer and thought make them my 
own, growing in the reaches of my lonely 
thought to greater affluence of progress and 
power. But I love Thee, Lord Jesus Christ, 
my Saviour, more than these ; therefore let me 
go. Already my brother and my kindred 
deem that I shrink from sacrifice and thus 
shall thy name be dishonored through me. 
Thou lovest me not, else wouldst Thou 
chasten me, wouldst permit me to endure 



344 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

hardness. Surely I am a bastard and no son. 
He that never suffered never loved." 

But while thus he prays and pleads, a voice 
from the Excellent Glory whispers to his soul : 
" I know thou lovest me. Yet shalt thou not 
embark. In Abraham I accepted the full pur- 
pose and the firm intent ; so will I in regard 
to thee. I have in reserve for thee tasks as 
stern, and sacrifices as great, as the forests of 
America can furnish, tasks for which I created 
thee and gave thee thy capacities. Thy fore- 
fathers were men of brawn, but thou art a 
man of mind. Have not I chosen the men 
who are to go ? Their flesh is hard, their 
bones are strong to bear the harness, and 
their whole course of thought is of a sterner 
cast, better fitted than thine to bear the sword 
and set the battle in array. It is not my will 
that the fire shall die upon the ancient altars ; 
remain thou to quicken its flame. I will not 
that thy mother, that old saint who hath 
reared her household in the nurture and ad- 
monition of the Lord, shall in her old age 
lack the protection of the son best fitted of 
all her race to cherish her declining years ; for 
I am a covenant-keeping God. Remain, there- 
fore, to lay thy hand upon her eyes. Learn- 



SERMONS 345 

ing, eloquence, and passing knowledge to 
bend the minds of men of all ranks to thy 
wish are thine. Go then into the councils 
of the nation, there to use thy power for me, 
to moderate the fierceness of persecution and 
send succor to those who are to go forth with 
the wolf and the bear to the hillside. There 
are keener pangs than those born of flowing 
blood and stiffening wounds on lonely battle- 
fields, gashes deeper than the tomahawk and 
the scalping knife can make, wrestlings more 
terrible than those with flesh and blood. Fear 
not that thou shalt lack occasions to prove thy 
zeal. Thou shalt find all the sunny memories 
of thy life turned to gall. The church to 
whose altar thy mother had thee linked with 
all the sweet memories of thy childhood shall 
close to thee its doors. Thy children shall be 
excluded from those seats of learning where 
their kindred and their mates resort. And 
thou must endure all these things being 
among them, and thus the iron will be 
pressed into thy soul day by day, which is 
more terrible than to endure in a foreign land 
where thou art equal to thy fellows in suffer- 
ing and in privilege. These are sterner trials 
to the flesh and to the faith, than when war 



346 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

horses are neighing and clarions sounding to 
the charge, and the maddening rush and roar 
of conflict impart the very courage they re- 
quire to rush on perils and set thy life upon 
a cast. Over the wreck of chosen thoughts 
and blighted hopes, through the anguish of 
susceptibilities which refinement and culture 
have made capacious of suffering of which 
under natures are incapable, shalt thou glorify 
me." Yet how many a short-sighted onlooker 
at that day, unable to appreciate the inward 
motive, judged him who remained as shrink- 
ing from the reproach of the Cross and wrest- 
ing the Scriptures to suit a carnal policy and 
the love of ease. 

Let us view this principle in yet another 
light. In a distant apartment of the same 
castle is seated one whose features, though of 
a stronger and sterner cast, browned by toils 
and exposure on fields of battle, still bear 
that family resemblance which denotes them 
brothers. But his limbs are cast in nature's 
stronger mould, and his hand turns naturally 
to the sword hilt. Upon his knees is a 
bundle of letters that he peruses with eager 
interest. They are from the exiles in Holland, 
informing him of the time of their departure, 



SEBMONS 347 

and urging him to join them. And among 
the letters are some from his old companions 
in the war of the low countries. Wrapped in 
thought the hours pass by him unheeded. At 
length, rising suddenly to his feet and thrust- 
ing open the door that leads to the great hall 
of the castle, he paces the stone floor. His 
eye kindles as it glances over the portraits of 
grim warriors and the proud trappings that 
adorn its walls. He stops in his lofty stride, 
a frown gathers upon his brow, his hand grips 
to the hilt of the sword at his side. He has 
made up his mind. His is the giant strength 
and haughty pride of an heroic line. Retiring 
to his chamber, he likewise kneels to pray, 
while the frown of anticipated conflicts and 
the flush of stirring memories have scarce yet 
faded from his brow. But there is no tremor 
in the hard tones of his voice, none of those 
bitter tears that wet the pillow of the other 
fall from his eyes. There is no breaking down 
of the strong man before Him who is stronger 
than the strong man armed. But he prays 
like Henry the Fifth at Agincourt or Bruce 
at Bannockburn. To carry his point he prays 
" my will be done " with the spirit of those 
who inscribed upon the muzzles of their 



348 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

cannon, " Lord, open thou my lips ; and my 
mouth shall shew forth thy praise.'' 

This man has condescended to help God. 
Through the long tempestuous voyage, those 
fearful months of mingled famine and plague 
when the icy breath of winter penetrated even 
to the pillows of the dying, and the Pilgrims 
drove the ploughshare through the graves of 
those most dear to them lest the savage should 
count the dead and ascertain their weakness, 
he passed unbroken. Neither hunger nor sick- 
ness bows his iron frame nor breaks his 
haughty spirit, and yet, unknown to himself, 
he is all the while wresting the truths of 
Scripture, and deems he is doing the will of 
God while he is consulting his own inclina- 
tions. Is the discipline of Providence there- 
fore to waste itself upon this rugged nature, 
only to be repelled like the surf from the 
rock, in broken wreaths of foam ? Will he 
never become as a little child that he may 
enter into the kingdom ? 

Yes. His daughter is dying. The daugh- 
ter, the only remaining member of a once 
numerous household, whom he loves with an 
affection the more absorbing since he loves 
nothing else, to whom he has given the scanty 



SERMONS 349 

morsel suffering hunger himself, whom he 
pressed to his bosom in the long nights of 
that terrible winter that she might gather 
warmth from his hardier frame, and around 
whom cluster all the affections that throb 
beneath the crust of his rugged nature, as the 
oak wrappeth its roots about the place of 
stones, — that daughter is dying. Though it is 
now the Indian summer and an abundant har- 
vest has scattered plenty among the dwellings 
of the exiles, his daughter is perishing beneath 
the terrible exposure she has endured. Upon 
her delicate frame the previous winter and 
spring have done their work. Stretched upon 
a couch of skins, she is fading like the yellow 
and falling leaves that the forest is showering 
upon the roof, and the morning breeze is gath- 
ering in little heaps around the threshold of 
the rude cabin. The strong man has met one 
stronger than himself. The arrow aimed by 
no uncertain hand has found the joints of the 
harness. A sweet smile begotten of that peace 
of God, which passeth all understanding, min- 
gles with the hectic flush on her cheek ; and as 
he watches the ebbing tide of life, every sigh 
of pain, every frown that furrows the pale 
brow, wrung from her by the agony of disso- 



350 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

lution, shakes his iron frame. But it is suffer- 
ing, not submission. She lifts her ringer, and 
he is at her side, takes her head upon his broad 
shoulder, and his war-worn cheek is pressed to 
hers, while the golden locks mingle with his 
white hairs like sunbeams reposing upon a 
fleecy cloud, as he listens to her low speech. 

" Father, I must soon leave thee." A hot 
tear falling on her cheek is the only reply. 
" Father," she says, laying her thin finger 
upon a yellow leaf that an eddy of the wind 
just then blew in at the open door upon the 
bed, " I am like this leaf, almost at my jour- 
ney's end." 

" I know it, my child," is the low answer. 

" Canst thou give me up ? " 

" I cannot give thee up. Not a drop of my 
blood flows in any living being but in thee, 
the blood of a noble race. I had thought that 
in this new soil, transplanted, the old oak 
might flourish with renewed strength ; but 
over thee, the dearest and the last, is creep- 
ing the shadow of the grave. My sons died 
a soldier's death, and I mourned them as a 
soldier should. Thy mother I married as the 
great marry, for reasons of state and policy, 
but thou with thy gentle ways hast knit thy- 



SERMONS 351 

self into my very heart, and I must lay thee 
in a nameless grave, and conceal it from the 
Indian's gaze, while thy kindred sleep beneath 
sculptured marble and the shadow of proud 
banner folds. Thine uncle who thought to 
take the journey with us flinched when it 
came to the trial, while I have faced pesti- 
lence, treachery, and war. Surely I have 
borne a heavy cross, and thus am I rewarded. 
God is too hard with me. He has no right 
to bereave me in my old age of the only being 
I ever truly loved." 

"Father, whom the Lord loveth He chas- 
teneth" 

" Dear child, torture me not thus or I shall 
go mad." 

"No, father, but thou wilt go mad if, in 
this desperate sorrow, thou dost not win 
Heaven's grace. If thy heart does not break 
in penitence, thy brain will reel in madness. 
Father, dear father, it becomes me to seek 
knowledge of thy gray hairs, and thou art 
esteemed by all a man of shrewd counsel. But 
to those who, like me, are on the brink of 
eternity, there is given a knowledge not of 
earth, and through these weak lips the spirit 
speaks. Deceive not thyself. Thou hast as 



352 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

yet borne no cross, but thou hast wrested the 
Scriptures. May it not be to thine own de- 
struction. Thy spirit could not brook oppres- 
sion, and, as thou couldst not resist, so hast 
thou fled from it. The perils of exile and 
the stormy seas were less terrible to thee than 
the foot of the oppressor on thy neck. Thou 
wast bred amid the alarms and in the bloody 
frays of the border wars ; thou hast loved the 
clash of steel, and the smoke of battle is as 
the breath of thy nostrils. Thou hast been a 
man of blood from thy youth up. My uncle 
was bred a scholar amid home delights, un- 
used to scenes of trial and hardship. They 
had terrors for him, whereas they had none 
for thee. And yet he would have gladly 
come with us had he not been forbidden of 
Heaven. I heard him pleading with God to 
make known to him his duty. That which 
would have been to him a real cross but was 
none to thee he was willing to take up. But 
God has laid upon him a weightier one at 
home. Thus hast thou prayed to have thine 
own way, hast suffered in accordance with 
thine own will, not the will of God. The 
cross, the real cross, is now before thee. Wilt 
thou take it up? If thou dost not do this, 



SERMONS 353 

father, whither I go thou canst not come. 
For nineteen years thou hast anticipated my 
slightest wish. Wilt thou now refuse my 
last request ? I, a timid maid, a daughter of 
affluence and luxury, who had never listened 
to a harsher sound than the murmur of Der- 
went- Water over the rocky bed and the breath 
of morn among the hills, have broken every 
tie, torn from my heart the youth I loved, 
because he stood between me and Christ, en- 
countered perils before which warriors quail, 
for the love of Jesus. I have drunk of the 
bitter cup, but the cross has brought me to 
the crown. I see it. It glitters in the hand 
of Christ. Soon it shall press my brow. 
Never in the flush of youth and love in my 
early home did I know such joy as in this 
savage wilderness, this rude hut, and at this 
dying hour fills my soul. So will the cross 
bring thee to the crown. Dear father, wilt 
thou not say, 6 Thy will be done ' ? " 

The words died upon her lips like the mur- 
mur of distant music. Her head which in the 
last energies of expiring nature she had raised 
from his shoulder fell back, and she passed 
away even on his bosom. The red light of 
morning fell on that still cold face on which 



354 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

the strong man's tears were showering like 
the summer rain, but they were tears of sub- 
mission. In that midnight vigil he had lived 
years, had fathomed the difference between 
doing the will of God when it suited and 
when it crossed his inclination, between wrest- 
ing and wrenching the Scriptures into con- 
formity with a haughty spirit and bringing 
that spirit into obedience to the truth; be- 
tween making a cross to suit ourselves and 
then bearing it in our own strength and for 
our own glory, and taking up that which 
Christ places before us. 

Are we, my dear friends, wresting the Scrip- 
tures, picking and choosing among the com- 
mands of God, and obeying only those that 
run parallel with our inclinations? Have you 
gone just so far in obeying the commands of 
God as fashion and the custom of your ac- 
quaintances would go and stopped short when 
duty became self-denial ? Have you done just 
as little for Christ as you thought could in 
any way consist with a fair profession in the 
eyes of the world, and have you gone just as 
far in the pleasures of the world as you in 
your judgment might go and still escape the 
fate of the unbeliever ? 



SEBMONS 355 

Some persons wrest the Scriptures with a 
rude force, a noisy and destructive violence, 
denying the existence and attributes of their 
Maker, and are open scoffers and unbelievers ; 
but others with a silent, imperceptible force, 
unperceived even by themselves, and silent 
as the power of frost which lifts the whole 
northern continent upon its shoulders. Their 
morality, Christian culture, urbanity of deport- 
ment, earnestness in defence of sound doctrine, 
private and public charities, are not grounded 
on a new heart, but proceed from other motives; 
force of education, the restraints of society, the 
love of a sect, connection of religion with some 
political opinion, and not from the spirit of 
love to Christ which it breathes ; they spring 
from the desire to be reconciled to God by 
something less galling to the pride of the 
human heart than unconditional surrender. 
My friends, receiving the doctrines of Scrip- 
ture without obeying their requirements is a 
plain and palpable wresting of the Scriptures. 
You believe there is a God whose hand rules 
the universe, yet you have never bent the knee 
to ask for His direction or to thank Him for the 
mercies He has bestowed. You believe that 
you must strive to enter in at the strait gate, 



356 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

yet you have never striven. You believe that 
when a person feels in his soul the striv- 
ings of the Holy Spirit directing him to God, 
he ought, if he would be saved, to fall in 
with and supplement them by his own efforts. 
You have felt these strivings, yet you have 
never lifted a finger to help yourselves. Is 
not this holding the truth in unrighteous- 
ness ? 

Delay is wresting the Scriptures. God saith, 
"Now is the accepted time." Unbelief says, 
" Will not another time do just as well ? " 
God says, " To-day if you will hear his voice.' ' 
Procrastination says, "Will not to-morrow do 
as well ? " God says, " You know not what 
a day may bring forth. " The careless hearer 
says, " To-morrow shall be as this day and 
much more abundant." Thus you think one 
thing and do another. This is not the way 
to live, and certainly it is not the way to die. 
Remove, I entreat you by faith and repentance, 
this strange discrepancy between faith and 
practice. 



THE BEAUTY OF THE AUTUMN 

[From a sermon to Bowdoin Students, October, 1889.] 

Autumn is a most beautiful and joyous sea- 
son of the year; more so even than spring. 
The winds are low, and rich with a solemn 
music. The days are clear and bright and 
have an element of assurance that pertains not 
to the changeful skies of April. The air is 
bracing and salubrious. The drapery of nature 
is gorgeous with the blended beauty of infinite 
hues. The crimson and scarlet of the oaks, 
the bright yellow of the birch, the bluish 
green of the willows contrasted with the brown 
and orange of the soil and rocks, are all radi- 
ant in the sunlight and the keen frosty air. 
The rich yellow of the corn bursting from the 
husk, the loaded stalks swaying heavily in the 
October wind, all combine to form a picture 
more beautiful, far more satisfactory, than 
spring presents. Spring is the season of hope, 
yet it is hope deferred. Many unforeseen casu- 

357 



358 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

alties may destroy the crop before it is ripe 
for the sickle. But harvest is hope realized. 
It is the time of taking possession. 

Thus it is with the servant of God. The 
autumn of his life is more glorious than its 
spring. That was hope ; this is reality. Then 
a long road beset with perils lay before him ; 
now they have been passed. Notwithstanding 
his trials, life has been sweet. It has not been 
altogether toil. He has beheld with open sense 
this glorious world and appreciated what the 
Creator has done for the happiness of his crea- 
tures. The song of birds, the breath of flowers, 
the majesty of seas, and the grandeur of moun- 
tains and of forests, the hope of spring, the 
beauty of summer, and the sweet companion- 
ship of kindred hearts, have all been his. But 
now he is to possess the source of all that so 
delighted hi in. He is to grasp that unseen 
hand that led him when he knew it not, and 
held the tangled thread of his daily life. He 
is to exchange the stream for the fountain, the 
sunbeam for the sun itself. The journey has 
not been without much of profit and pleasure, 
and the heart of the wayfarer has been cheered 
by messages from loved ones, but he would 
rather be at home. He who made the flower 



SERMONS 359 

is lovelier than the flower. He who gave the 
grace doth the grace exceed. To sow the seed 
and watch its growth has been a hopeful labor, 
but it is better to bind the sheaves. Eich are 
the fading splendors of the autumn and gor- 
geous the dyes in which the Almighty has 
decked the departing year. Sweet the murmur 
of autumnal winds among the falling leaves 
mingling with the deeper cadence of the streams. 
But a brighter glory illumines the autumn of 
life that has been spent with God and for God. 
What language shall describe, what figures 
worthily set forth, the maturity of a soul that 
in these days of secular knowledge and Gospel 
privilege has gathered to itself, with a sancti- 
fied avarice, all that God has taught in the 
mighty utterances of nature and the clearer 
revelation of His word, that has laid art and 
science under contribution and grappled to 
every opportunity of intellectual and spiritual 
growth, that by trial has been refined, and by 
blessings quickened to a higher measure of 
gratitude and love. 

Permit one united to you by the college tie 
to which time only adds intensity and depth, 
who has travelled over the path your feet are 
now pressing, who has reached that period of 



360 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

life when the tissue of the dream robe has 
fallen and when dreams unchilled by truth no 
longer minister that maddening fuel to the 
feverish blood, permit one to inquire if you 
are laying the foundations for such a maturity 
as has been described. You are living in a 
day that affords opportunity and likewise 
compels responsibility. Inspired by such 
sentiments, using aright your splendid oppor- 
tunities and holding yourself true to your 
great responsibilities, may you resemble trees 
planted by living waters. May you be en- 
rolled among the inhabitants of the city that 
hath foundations built by God on the banks 
of that river 

" Whose sapphire crested waves in glory roll 
O'er golden sands, and die upon the shore in music." 



THE ANCHOR OF HOPE 

[From a sermon preached at the Second Parish church, 
Portland, Maine, on Sunday, August 5, 1900, "Old Home 

Week."] 

Hebrews vi. 19. " Which hope ive have as 
an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, 
and which enter eth into that within the veil." 

The apostle declares that the relation of a 
hope in Christ to the soul is the same as that 
of the anchor to the ship. 

The value of an anchor in emergencies is 
well known. A large ship filled with pas- 
sengers is making her passage in midwinter 
across the western ocean. As she strikes 
soundings the weather thickens. The wind 
is easterly ; the gale increases ; the sea makes ; 
snow begins to fall; and no pilot is to be 
found. But confident, too confident, of his 
ability, the master, unwilling to lie off, runs 
into the narrow channel of Boston Bay. The 
gale increases ; the snow thickens. Sail after 

361 



362 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

sail is taken in until the ship under short can- 
vas can no longer hold her own, but makes 
leeway continually. Suddenly arises the cry, 
" Breakers to leeward ! Breakers to lee- 
ward ! " and the seamen behold the long, 
black line of ragged rocks and the white surf 
that breaks upon them, where the strongest 
ship becomes in a few moments like the chips 
and bark that fell from her timbers in framing. 
There is now but one resource. Canvas 
can do no more. The navigator's expedients 
are exhausted. There is but one hope left to 
cling to. The anchor may bring her up. 
With the skill and energy of men working 
for their own lives and the lives of those 
dependent upon their exertions, the ship is 
brought to and the anchors are let go. The 
ship trembles as fathom after fathom of mas- 
sive chain is jerked through the hawse-holes. 
The fire flies from the iron folds that encircle 
the windlass, and, as she comes up to that 
terrific sea breaking mountains high, taking 
it over both shoulders and filling her whole 
waist with water, pitching and wallowing till 
every stick seems about ready to go out of 
her, and the windlass itself to be carried into 
the bows, anxious eyes look ahead at the seas 



SERMONS 363 

and astern at the breakers. A cry is heard : 
" She drags ! She drags ! The surf is bring- 
ing the anchors home ! They won't hold ! ' 
Every cheek grows pale and strong men 
tremble. 

Presently there is another cry: "Now she 
holds ! She holds ! The anchors have got 
her ! " And men who have not spoken to- 
gether during the voyage embrace each other 
for joy. The last link of scope is given ; the 
chains are weather-bitted ; the slatting canvas 
is furled ; the yards are sharpened to the wind, 
and then she lies in that tremendous surf, 
whose pitiless diapason drowns every other 
sound — two hundred souls depending for 
life upon the links of those chains and the 
strength and clutch of those anchors. 

Thus with the soul of man. Without the 
Christian hope it is a ship without an anchor, 
adrift on a stormy sea, at the mercy of its 
own passions, the temptations of life, and the 
wiles of the devil. These are the tempests 
which the soul must meet and struggle with ; 
and, destitute of the gospel anchor, it must 
make shipwreck of faith and a good con- 
science. 

The anchor is the seaman's last resort. 



364 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

He has many expedients with which to battle 
and make head against the tempest, but when 
all other methods fail, then the anchor must 
bring her up or she is lost. 

Thus the Christian, when all other expedi- 
ents fail, when his own strength is but weak- 
ness, flings himself upon the mercy of God, 
and moors head and stern to the eternal 
promise and the covenants of grace. 

"Which hope we have as an anchor of 
the soul, both sure and steadfast, and which 
entereth into that within the veil." 

Many a good ship has been lost, not because 
her anchors were insufficient and her ground 
tackle poor, not because they were not thrown 
clear and the ship properly secured to 4 them, 
but because the holding ground was bad, — 
a smooth ledge, a soft mud, or loose sand, — 
insomuch that the anchors either slip over or 
cut through, and the seaman must perish with- 
out any fault of his own. In other places is 
found a soft mud or gravel upon the surface 
and beneath a strong clay, into which the 
anchor beds itself so sure and steadfast that 
no wind or sea will bring it home — the best 
of holding ground. Such anchorages are 
highly prized by seafaring men; they will 



SEBMONS 365 

beat up many a mile to windward to gain 
an anchor in them. 

Thus the anchor of the soul is both sure 
and steadfast, because as the anchor of the 
ship goes through the surface mud into the 
deep, tenacious clay, it entereth into that 
within the veil. 

The Holy of Holies, the most sacred place 
in the Jewish temple, was concealed by a veil, 
which was rent in twain at the crucifixion. 
That event was typical of those inward 
spiritual truths which are revealed to the 
believer by Christ, and in which his hope 
consists. The promises of grace and the 
inward witness of the spirit that he is an 
heir of those promises through faith in Christ 
are the holding ground of the believers' 
anchor, where once bedded it is sure and 
steadfast. 

These are inward spiritual joys of which 
the believer cannot be deprived except by his 
own remissness and the letting down of the 
anchor watch. These promises were the 
anchor of the apostle's experience. A rough, 
stormy life was his — almost always on a lee 
shore and among the breakers. Very little 
smooth water did he see, for in every city 



366 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

bonds and imprisonment awaited him; but 
he had on board the gospel anchor, and 
shackled to it the chain of a rich and deep 
experience. The bitter end of that chain was 
clinched around the riding bits of his soul ; 
and he had no fear that the anchor would 
come home or the chain part that moored him 
to it, and he could say : " death, where is 
thy sting ? grave, where is thy victory ? " 
Life is the sea ; the soul is the vessel ; the 
grace, gifts, and experience of the soul make 
up the priceless cargo with which the ship is 
freighted. Heaven is the harbor all hope to 
make. The temptations, labor, and afflictions 
of life are the tempests we must encounter. 
It is a stormy sea and a wintry passage. You 
need good ground tackle and good holding 
ground. Have you them ? If not, it is from 
negligence, not necessity. It is, my friend, 
because you have not bestirred yourself to 
take hold of the promises of grace that have 
been pressed upon you. 



PRAYER OFFERED ON MEMORIAL DAY 
(May 30, 1883) AT BRUNSWICK, MAINE 

Thou who art equally supreme in the moral and 
the material universe, guiding the sea-bird to her nest 
amid the blinding snows, the breaker's foam, and the 
driving mist of ocean, who makest small the drops of 
rain, and a way for the lightning of thunder, and the 
thing that is hid bringest forth to light, we adore thy 
power and thy wisdom ; we magnify thy grace ; we 
hallow thy name. With penitence we confess our 
manifold transgressions as individuals and as a nation. 
Holiness belongeth unto Thee, but unto us shame and 
confusion of faces. 

We thank Thee that Thou didst direct our fore- 
fathers to these shores, and inspire them with pur- 
pose and wisdom to form a civil compact built upon 
the principles of religion, education, law, and labor. 
We thank Thee that, in the face of famine, pestilence, 
and relentless foes, they accomplished their purpose, 
and with a spirit of self-sacrifice worthy of the cause, 
devoted themselves as stepping stones to bridge the 
path of future generations that they might create a 
republic, lay the foundations of civil liberty, resist 
oppression, and seal their devotion to their principles 
with their blood. We thank Thee that though they 
have passed away, their principles have survived, and 

367 



368 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

that when the republic they had reared was rocking 
to its foundations, assailed by foes without and treach- 
ery within, their children did not prove unworthy of 
the sires who begat them, nor recreant to the principles 
they drew in with their mothers' milk and were 
taught at their fathers' knees. We thank Thee that 
they were equally ready to vindicate at the cannon's 
mouth and maintain with property or life the princi- 
ples of civil and religious liberty, and the inalienable 
right of every man to the fruit of his own labor. 

We pray Thee that, on this day, set apart by the 
Executive of the nation as a day of grateful remem- 
brance, we may appreciate the true nature of the 
perils we have escaped and acknowledge our indebted- 
ness to the providence of that Being who ruleth over 
the affairs of nations. May we not in our prosperity 
forget those dark hours when all faces gathered black- 
ness. May we not merely decorate the graves, but 
may we ever cherish with affectionate remembrance 
our obligations to those whose courage mounted in 
proportion to the imminence of the danger, and who 
approved their loyalty with their blood. May we not 
on this day fraught with associations so sad to those 
whose wounds, partially healed, are this day reopened, 
forget the fatherless whose parents sleep in bloody 
graves, and the widows whom this day reminds of all 
they have lost, and the aged parents from whom war 
took the support of their declining years. We commit 
these to thy care and keeping ; we commit unto Thee 
all those who suffered and sacrificed that the Union 
might be preserved. And we thank Thee for the com- 
fort of a vast army come back from the deadly uproar 



SERMONS 369 

of arms to take up again the unheroic duties of life, 
and strive by honest living to maintain the principles 
they fought to defend. 

We pray for thy blessing upon thy servant. May 
he be enabled to expound and enforce those principles 
which lie at the foundation of social happiness and 
free institutions; those principles which have made 
this republic, which a little more than a century ago 
was a mere shrub with bare shade sufficient to cover 
its roots, to become a tree that hath sent forth its roots 
to the sea and its branches to the rivers, and on whose 
foliage the sunlight loves to linger, and on whose 
branches the dew of heaven lieth all night. — Amen. 



VERSE 



FKOM "THE PHANTOMS OF THE MIND 

[First printed in Bowdoin Portfolio, September, 1839.] 

I would not be a fragile flower 

To languish in a lady's bower, 

A silken thing of texture rare 

That fears to meet God's blessed air ; 

My life a water, stagnant, low, 

Without an ebb, without a flow ; 

Chained like a captive to his oar 

To toil on, on, forevermore ! 

And supplicate with frantic cry 

For the " poor privilege to die " ; 

A smooth-faced boy, a harmless thing, 

A kitten playing with a string, 

A child without, a brute within, 

Without e'en energy to sin. 

Not thus, when erst that iron race 

From whom our birth we proudly trace, 

No sculptured arras decked the bed 

Whereon reposed the patriot's head ; 

Nor proud device or motto wore 

Those stern-faced men that lived of yore 

In the good days of " auld lang syne," 

When liberty, a feeble vine, 

Lay bruised and trailing on the ground, 

Nor yet a single trellis found j 
373 



374 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

Gently they reared its drooping crest, 
They bade its tendrils twine, 
And many a traveller since hath blessed 
The shadow of that vine. 



THE DEMON OF THE SEA 

[First printed in Bowdoin Portfolio, November, 1839.] 

Ah ! tell me not of your shady dells, 

Where the lilies gleam and the fountain wells, 

Where the reaper rests when his task is o'er, 

And the lake-wave sobs on the verdant shore, 

And the rustic maid with a heart all free, 

Hies to the well-known trysting-tree ; 

For I'm the god of the rolling sea, 

And the charms of earth are nought to me. 

O'er the thundering chime of the breaking surge, 

On the lightning's wing my course I urge, 

On the thrones of foam right joyous ride 

'Mid the sullen dash of the angry tide. 

I hear ye tell of music's power, 

The rapture of a sigh, 
When beauty in her wizard bower 

Unveils her languid eye. 
Of those who die in rugged fight 
And battling for their country's right 
With the shivered brand in the "red right hand," 
And the plaudits of a rescued land. 
Ye never knew the infernal fire, 
The withering curse, the scorching ire, 



VERSE 375 

That rages, maddens in the breast 
Of him who rules the billow's crest. 
Heard ye that last despairing yell 
That wailed Creation's funeral knell, 
When young and old, the vile, the brave, 
Were circled in one common grave ? 
While on my ear of driving foam 

By moaning whirlwinds sped, 
O'er what was joyous earth I roam, 

And trample on the dead. 
This is the music that my ear 
Thrills with stern ecstasy to hear ! 
I love to view some lonely bark, 
The sport of storms, the lightning's mark, 
Scarce struggling through the freshening wave 
That foams and yawns to be her grave ! 

I saw a son and father fight 
For a drifting spar their lives to save ; 
The son he throttled his father gray, 
And tore the spar from his clutch away, 
Till he sank beneath the wave ; 

And deemed it were a noble sight. 
I saw upon a shattered wreck 
All swinging at the tempest's beck, 
A mother lone, whose frenzied eye 
Wandered in hopeless agony 
O'er that vast plain where naught was seen, 
The ocean and the sky between, 
And there all buried to the breast 
In the hungry surf that round her prest — 
With feeble arms, in anguish wild, 
High o'er her head she raised her child, 



376 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

Endured of winds and waves the strife, 
To add a unit to its life. 

I whelmed that infant in the sea 

To add a pang to her misery, 

And the wretched mother's frantic yell 

Came o'er me like a soothing spell ! 

Are ye so haughty in your pride, 

To deem of all the earth beside 

That yours are fields and fragrant flowers, 

And lute-like voices in your bowers, 

And gold and gems of priceless worth, 

And all the glory of the earth ? 

Ah, mean is all your pageantry 

To that proud, fadeless blazonry, 

That waves in scathless beauty free 

Beneath the blue, old rolling sea ! 

For there are flowers that wither not, 

And leaves that never fall, 
Immortal forms in each wild grot, 

Still bright and changeless all. 
Decay is not on beauty's bloom, 

No canker in the rose, 
No prescience of a future doom 

To mar the sweet repose — 
There Proteus' changeful form is seen, 

And Triton winds his shell, 
While through old Ocean's valleys green, 

The tuneful echoes swell. 
But though a Demon rightly named, 
For terror more than mercy famed, — 
Yet demons e'en respect the power 



VEBSE 377 

That nerves the heart in danger's hour. 
And when the veteran of a hundred storms, 

Whom many a wild midnight 
I've girded with a thousand startling forms 

Of terror and affright, — 
When tempests roar and hell-fiends scream, 
The thunders crash, the lightnings gleam, 
'Mid biting cold and driving hail 
Still grasps the helm, still trims the sail, 
Nor deigns to utter coward cries, 
But as he lived, so fearless dies, — 
Mingles his last faint, bubbling sigh 
With the pealing tempest's banner-cry ; — 
Then winds are hushed, the billow falls 

Where storms were wont to be, 
As I bear him to the untrodden halls 

Of the deep unf athomed sea ! 
Now Triton sends a mournful strain 

Through all that vast profound, — 
At once a bright immortal train 

Comes thronging at the sound. 
And on a shining pearly car 

They place the honored dust, 
And Ocean's chargers gently bear 

Along the sacred trust, 
While far o'er all the glassy plain 

By mighty Neptune led, 
In sadness moves that funeral train, — 

Thus Ocean wails her dead ! 
And now the watch of life is past, 
The shattered hulk is moored at last, 
Nor e'en the tempest's thrilling breath 



378 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

Can wake " the dull, cold ear of death." 
No bitter thoughts of home and loved ones dart 
Their untold anguish through the seaman's heart. 

Peaceful be thy slumbers, brother, 
There's no prouder grave for thee, 
Well may pine for thee a mother, 
Flower of ocean's chivalry ! 



PORTLAND 

Still may I love, beloved of thee, 

My own fair city of the sea ! 

Where moulders back to kindred dust 

The mother who my childhood nurst, 

And strove, with ill-requited toil, 

To till a rough, ungrateful soil ; 

Yet kindly spared by Heaven to know 

That Faith's reward is sure, though slow, 

And see the prophet's mantle grace 

The rudest scion of her race. 

And while around thy seaward shore 
The Atlantic doth its surges pour, 
(Those verdant isles, thy bosom-gems) 
May Temples be thy diadems ; 
Spire after spire in beauty rise, 
Still pointing upward to the skies, 
Unwritten sermons, and rebukes of love, 
To point thy toiling throngs to worlds above. 



VERSE 379 



AN ODE 

[Written for the Semi-centennial Celebration at Bowdoin 
College, August 31, 1852.] 

From waves that break to break again, 
From winds that die to gather might, 

How pleasant on the stormy main 
Appears the sailor's native height. 

And sweet, I ween, the graceful tears 
That glisten in the wand'rer's eye, 

As haunts and homes of early years 

Begemmed with morning's dewdrops lie. 

Borne on the fragrant breath of morn, 

His lazy vessel stems the tide 
Among the fields of waving corn 

That nestle on the river's side. 

His mother's cottage through the leaves 
Gleams like a rainbow seen at night, 

While all the visions fancy weaves 
Are stirring at the well-known sight. 

But sweeter memories cluster here 
Than ever stirred a seaman's breast, 

Than e'er provoked his grateful tear, 
Or wooed the mariner to rest. 



380 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

? Twas here our life of life began — 
The spirit felt its dormant power ; 

'Twas here the child became a man — 
The opening bud became a flower. 

And from Niagara's distant roar 
And homes beside the heaving sea, 

Rank upon rank thy children pour, 
And gather to thy Jubilee. 

On these old trees each nestling leaf, 
The murmur of yon flowing stream, 

Has power to stir a buried grief, 
Or to recall some youthful dream. 

Each path that skirts the tangled wood, 
Or winds amidst its secret maze, 

Worn by the feet of those we loved, 
Brings back the forms of other days. 

Of those whose smile was heaven to thee, 
Whose voice a richer music made 

Than brooks that murmur to the sea, 
Or birds that warble in the shade. 

Around these ancient altar fires 
We cluster with a joyous heart, 

While ardent youth and hoary sires 
Alike sustain a grateful part. 



VEBSE 381 



A HYMN 

[Written for the Celebration of the Twenty-eighth Anni- 
versary of the Boston Seaman's Friend Society, at Music 
Hall, Boston, May 28, 1856.] 

I was not reared where heaves the swell 
Of surf on coasts remote and drear, 

But grew with roses, in a dell, 

And waked with bird-notes in my ear. 

Glad hours on golden pinions sped, 
As folded to her throbbing breast, 

A mother's lips their fragrance shed, 
And lulled me with a prayer to rest. 

The red has faded from my cheek, 

And bronzed and scarred the boyish face ; 

Affection's eye might vainly seek 
One lingering lineament to trace. 

Shipwrecked, the Sailor's Home I sought, 
My raiment gone, my shipmates dead, 

Through poverty reluctant brought, 
And there a sober life I led. 

But when the evening prayer was said, 
It brought the unaccustomed tear, 

A mother's hand was on my head, 
Her voice was thrilling in mine ear. 



382 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

Old memories waked that long had slept, 
They forced the spirit's brazen crust; 

I wept and prayed, I prayed and wept, 
Till anguish ripened into trust. 

Blest be the hands that reared thy dome 
The wandering seaman's step to greet ; 

Guiding the homeless to a home, 
And sinners to a mercy-seat. 



TRUE POETRY'S TASK 

When first the human clay, instinct with thought, 

Doth feel the motions of those hidden fires 

That by a subtle alchemy sublime 

The crude contexture of its grosser powers, 

It is not life — rather capacity 

Of life and power hereafter to be given. 

Life lies beyond us, as an Orphic tale 

Of things mysterious and dimly seen, 

A gorgeous phantom, but a phantom still 

That ever is, and ever is without. 

We dwell amid the border flowers that bloom 

To bless and cheer life's brier-planted paths, 

Its dusty turnpikes, and its scorching noons ; 

And thus our primal being is a dream 

And most mysterious to the dreamer, 

E'en as the dim and iron forms that frown 

From the dark walls of some old corridor 

On which the moonbeams thro' the crumbling towers 

Bestow expression and inform with life 



VERSE 383 

Delicious but delight indefinite. 

The finer tissues of that wondrous web 

That doth so strangely link spirit to sense 

Matter to mind, are all unwoven yet ; 

Those subtle telegraphs that make report 

Of outward action to the inward life 

Still in the secret caves of being sleep. 

The soul is conscious of no other tie 

To nature than to love its beauty 

And with an open sense luxuriate 

In woods and fields with animal delight. 

For as the sturdy trunk and massive limbs 

Of the gigantic oak, lie deftly hid 

Within the acorn's small periphery, 

Till in the pregnant bosom of the earth, 

Warmed by the sun, moistened with summer dews, 

It bursts its coffin and leaps forth to light ; 

Thus when the soul is in its progress brought, 

Led on by nature's genial processes, 

To touch reality and outward life, 

There is a stirring, from its inmost depths, 

Of yearning thoughts and deathless energies, 

Seeking the outward vesture that confers 

A definite existence and a form. 

Strong roots shoot forth and fibres more minute 

That by mysterious alchemy impart 

Substance to shadow, breath to lifeless forms. 

Life is no more a pageant to admire ; 

Since with a yearning for a higher life, 

The power to struggle, and the thirst to know, 

Awakes a bitter principle to sin, 

Breeding intestine war and conflict fierce, 



384 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

Till powers are marshalled in the mind 'tself 

That with itself chaotic warfare wage. 

Henceforth man's life is conflict, and his doom 

By conflict to grow stronger, to contend 

From the rude cross within some Alpine gorge 

To the proud blazon of ancestral tombs. 

In eastern myths and Christian chronicles, 

In heathen temples, and in holy shrines 

The same stern truth is graven on them all — 

That conflict only doth ennoble man. 

But man is not sufficient to himself 

In this great conflict, therefore God has given 

A twofold revelation to his faith. 

Subjective, one to reason makes appeal ; 

The other to the grosser sense explains 

Stern truths by most persuasive images, 

Graving dread mandates on the shifting clouds, 

Weaving of wild flowers and of foliage green 

A genial symbol for a genial faith. 

This is the task to Poetry assigned : 

Of life divine to be the messenger. 

As to the sorrow-stricken soul of him 

Who knelt and prayed in lone Gethsemane 

The angel choir did gently minister, 

E'en thus true Poetry doth nerve the soul 

Upon its Alpine passage to commune 

With truths that quicken and with thoughts that stir 

It is the souPs sheet-anchor in the strife. 




Elijah Kellogg at Eighty-six. 

1899. 



MISCELLANEOUS 



MEMORIES OF LONGFELLOW 

Topsham, Maine, February 10, 1885. 

Editors of the Orient : 

Dear Sirs, — I have received your note 
requesting me to furnish some reminiscences 
of Longfellow. I would say in reply that 
although yielding to no one in my admiration 
of the character and genius of Mr. Longfellow 
or regard for his memory, I still feel quite 
unable to contribute anything that would 
meet your expectations or serve your pur- 
pose, from the fact that my knowledge of 
him began and to a large extent closed in very 
early youth before his powers had developed. 
Nevertheless, as everything even remotely 
connected with him or his is valued and 
treasured, I will endeavor to comply with 
your request. 

Hon. Stephen Longfellow, the father of 
Henry, was a friend of my father's and re- 
sided near us. Judge Potter, the father of 

387 



388 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

the poet's first wife, lived almost directly 
opposite to us; and in an adjoining house a 
sister of the late Eben Steele taught a school 
which I attended with two of the daughters 
of Judge Potter and other children. The 
Potter children, being the nearest neighbors, 
were my playmates. I can see them now with 
their little blue aprons and happy faces. There 
was something very attractive in the expres- 
sion of Mary Potter's features, the future wife 
of the poet. It remains as fresh in my recol- 
lection to-day as it was then. I used to hear 
a great deal about angels, but cherished very 
incoherent ideas in regard to them, and one 
evening when my mother was teaching me a 
hymn, the conclusion of which was : — 

" May angels guard me while I sleep 
Till morning light appears/' 

I astonished her by asking if Mary Potter was 
not an angel. 

Though she was quiet and retiring, it made 
one happy to be in her society ; and she en- 
joyed fun as well as the rest of us, only in a 
more quiet way. One morning there was a 
platform laid around the pump in the school- 
yard and a man employed to paint it red. On 



MISCELLANEOUS 389 

going to dinner he put his paint-pot and brush 
under the edge of the platform where we dis- 
covered it. The Potters wore red morocco 
shoes and I wore black ones. Some other 
children who rejoiced in red shoes were very 
proud of them, which excited my envy. I 
painted my own and the shoes of several 
others a staring red, and we strutted among 
our mates with great satisfaction, which, how- 
ever, was somewhat abated upon the arrival 
of the schoolmistress. 

It was the custom at that time in Portland 
to send children to the Academy very soon 
after leaving the primary school, and there I 
first met Henry Longfellow; but he was a 
large boy fitting for college, and I was a little 
one. I can therefore only give you the im- 
pression made (by his habits and bearing) upon 
the mind of a boisterous boy who had with 
him nothing in common. But I recollect per- 
fectly the impression made upon myself and 
others by his deportment, and from these im- 
pressions draw the inferences I communicate. 
He was a very handsome boy, retiring without 
being reserved ; there was no chill in his man- 
ners. There was a frankness about him that 
won you at once ; he looked you square in the 



390 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

face. His eyes were full of expression, and it 
seemed as if yon could look down into them as 
into a clear spring. There were many rough 
boys in the school, a great deal of horse-play 
and a good many rough-and-tumble games at 
recess, and the boys who were not inclined 
to engage in them often excited the ill-will of 
their ruder mates who were prone to imagine 
that the former felt above them. As a result 
the quiet boys sometimes fell victims to this 
feeling and were dragged out and rudely 
treated. But no one ever thought of taking 
such liberties with Longfellow, nor did such 
suspicions ever attach to him. Not even John 
Bartels or John Goddard ever meddled with 
him. I think John Goddard expressed the 
common sentiment of the school when, after 
some boy had remarked upon Longfellow's 
retiring habits, he exclaimed : " Oh, let him 
alone. He don't belong to our breed of cats." 
He had no relish for rude sports, but he loved 
to bathe in a little creek on the border of 
Deering's Oaks. And he would sometimes 
tramp through the woods with a gun ; but 
this was mostly through the influence of 
others. He loved much better to lie under a 
tree and read. Small boys think it a great 



MISCELLANEOUS 391 

affair to tag after larger ones, especially if the 
larger ones carry guns, and I have often 
picked up the dead squirrels that he and 
others used to shoot in the oaks. And he and 
John Kinsman or Edward Preble would boost 
me into a tree to shake off acorns for them. 

His early associations were very strong, and 
as is the fact in respect to most of us, they 
strengthened with age and cropped out every- 
where in his verse. One familiar with the 
scenes and events of his youth can readily 
trace to their source the allusions in many 
of his verses. It was doubtless after gather- 
ing the mayflower on some half -holiday or 
tramping through the woods that, as he lay 
beneath some one of those old oaks on the 
verge of the forest, with limbs thirty feet in 
length within reach of the hand, and looked 
up through the branches and watched the 
clouds go by, he received those impressions 
which took form in the following lines : — 

u Pleasant it was when woods were green 
And winds were soft and low, 
To lie amid some sylvan scene, 
Where the long drooping boughs between 
Shadows dark and sunlight sheen 
Alternate come and go." 



392 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

Though Longfellow was a thoughtful, he 
certainly was not a melancholy boy, and the 
minor key to which so much of his verse is 
attuned, and that tinge of sadness which his 
countenance wore in later years, were due to 
that first great sorrow which came upon him 
in the loss of her to whom I have referred, 
and which was chiselled still deeper by subse- 
quent trials. He never buried her, and that 
beautiful tribute to her memory in the " Foot- 
steps of Angels " is as true as tender. 

He was ever ready to extend a helping 
hand to others. After leaving school we 
took different paths and never met again till 
1870, when I received a communication from 
him through Mr. James T. Fields, saying that 
he had kept run of me and wished me to call 
upon him at a time fixed by him. I went and 
was most cordially received. I asked him how 
he had kept run of me. He replied through 
his brother Alexander, his sister Mrs. Pierce, 
and Mr. James Greenleaf, his brother-in-law, 
an intimate friend and later schoolmate of 
mine. We reviewed the past, and almost the 
first question he asked in relation to it was 
about the scholars in that Academy, and he 
mentioned almost every name but the one I 



MISCELLANEOUS 393 

knew was most dear to him. This is what 
led me to say that he never buried her. 

But what a change in that care-worn face, 
marked with the deep lines of thought and 
sorrow, from the smooth-cheeked boy of my 
early recollections, unconscious of care and to 
whom the future was rainbow tinted and full 
of hope. The eyes, however, had not lost their 
wonted expression, and the same sweet smile 
was on his lips, and he encouraged me in the 
kindest manner to continue in the course I 
had just then commenced, in words that it 
does not become me to repeat, but which will 
never be forgotten. And from that time to 
his death I found that neither success nor sor- 
row had narrowed the sympathies or chilled 
the heart of Henry Longfellow. 



BEN BOLT 

Some time since, in the story of a wasted 
life, we depicted the results of intemperance 
and the terrible grasp which this vice fastens 
upon its victims, alas, but seldom broken. 
Lest our young readers should be left to im- 
agine that reformation is hopeless, we will 
relate the story of Ben Bolt. 

Ben Bolt was an English sailor about forty 
years of age, and a very powerful man, of an 
iron frame and constitution and a choice man 
on board ship. He was withal intelligent, 
having received a good common school edu- 
cation, and of most excellent disposition even 
when in liquor. He was honest as the sun, 
was never known to back out of a ship, cheat 
his landlord, or run away after getting his 
month's advance. Ben was an excellent 
singer, and obtained his name from a song 
called " Ben Bolt," that he was very fond of 
singing. What his real appellation was, for 
many years I did not know. He had none 

394 



MISCELLANEOUS 395 

of the vices common to seamen except drink- 
ing, and that he had to perfection, insomuch 
that he was seldom sober while on shore. 

I was conscious of a singular attraction 
towards Ben ; I liked him ; and whenever I 
could catch him comparatively sober, en- 
deavored to wean him from his cups. Sail- 
ors are, in general, inclined to relate incidents 
of their life, and if they have religious or 
well-to-do parents, to speak of them with sat- 
isfaction and honest pride. Ben, however, 
was reticent in this respect. 

One day I was sitting at an open window 
in the reading room of the Sailors' Home, and 
Ben was seated on the piazza outside singing 
a psalm in a low tone; at the conclusion he 
turned, and seeing me, said : — 

" Parson, I've sung that psalm many times 
in the parish church at home." 

Then, as though afraid I might pursue the 
subject further, abruptly left. I judged from 
this that during his youth he might have sung 
in the church choir ; at any rate he could read 
music, had a thorough knowledge of it, and 
was a skilful player on the violin. 

There were two hundred grog shops within 
a short distance of the Home, several within 



396 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

three or four rods of the door, and every in- 
ducement was held out to encourage seamen 
to drink. Ben had shipped for New Orleans, 
but when the hour came for the vessel to sail, 
he was missing. The superintendent of the 
Home told the " runners" to go to Ben's room, 
get a key, open his chest, and see if he had 
got his outfit of sea-clothes and was ready to 
go, and if so, to search among the grog shops 
and find him ; but if he had not got his outfit, 
he would take a man who was ready and put 
Ben in another vessel. 

I happened to be in the entry when they 
came upstairs, and went into the room with 
them. They opened the chest, and there were 
his oil clothes, sea-boots, woollens, and every 
part of his outfit, and stowed snugly away 
among the flannels a two-gallon jug of whis- 
key. One of the " runners " took it and was 
about to pour the liquor out of the window, 
but I interfered, saying : — 

" You have no right to pour his liquor out ; 
he bought it and paid for it and worked hard 
to earn the money.' ' 

" It is against the rules of the house to 
bring liquor into it." 

" Well, it is here now." 



MISCELLANEOUS 397 

"When he goes aboard, the mate of that 
ship will throw it overboard. The last time 
he went from here he carried a jug, and the 
mate of the ship took all their liquor away, 
for every man in the forecastle had a jug." 

"Well, the mate can do as he likes, but 
you shan't pour it out." 

I put the jug back and sat down on the 
chest to wait for Ben. The " runners " did 
not succeed in rinding him at his usual haunts, 
and, as time was pressing, another man was 
taken and Ben left behind. I knew he had 
a noble spirit of his own, and that taking 
liquor from him by force had accomplished 
nothing in the past, and I resolved to make 
an effort in another direction. I had some 
temperance tracts, written by the boatswain of 
an English man-of-war, discussing the evils 
of intemperance from the sailor's standpoint, 
which I knew had produced impressions upon 
many sailors. I spread one of these over the 
jug, then took a Bible and opened to the 
twenty-ninth verse of the twenty-third chapter 
of Proverbs, locked the chest, and went away. 

The doors of the Home were locked at 
twelve o'clock, and those who were not in by 
that time must stay out. Ben came home, as 



398 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

the watchman told me, about ten minutes 
before twelve pretty decidedly drunk. Find- 
ing himself safe in his room, he concluded as 
he was not going in the ship, and didn't need 
the whiskey to carry to sea, he would have 
a good drink and turn in. Opening the chest, 
he saw the tract and read it, espied the Bible 
and read that, the result of which was that he 
tinned in without tasting the whiskey. When 
he waked in the morning, he read the tract 
again, then took the jug, turned the liquor 
out of the window, and broke the vessel on 
the window-sill. At breakfast he told the 
"runners " what he had done. Upon this 
they told him of what had taken place the 
previous afternoon, and who had placed the 
tracts and Bible in his chest beside the rum 
jug. He then came into my room, the tears 
on his cheeks, exclaiming : — 

" Parson, you wouldn't let 'em pour out my 
whiskey." 

"No, Ben." 

"Well, I've poured it out and broke the 
jug, and so help me God not another drop of 
whiskey shall pass my lips. Rum and I have 
fell out. There's two kinds of drunk, being 
drunk in the head and in the legs. I was 



MISCELLANEOUS 399 

drunk in the legs last night ; I had all I 
could do to get upstairs, but my head was 
clear enough to read that tract and take the 
sense of it. The boatswain of that man-of- 
war talks well 'cause he talks from experience. 
I also read the Good Book and took the sense 
of that. I went to the " runners," and they 
told me you wouldn't let 'em pour out the 
whiskey. Ah, that took hold. I knew it 
wasn't 'cause you wanted me to drink liquor 
that you wouldn't let 'em pour it out. I 
knew you was a bitter enemy to liquor, but a 
good friend to the man who drinks it. Don't 
think I've forgotten all the good words you've 
said to me during the four or five years I've 
been knocking about this house drunk. I've 
thought of 'em in the middle watch at sea 
when I was myself. I've thought of these 
bloodsuckers round this house trying to get 
my money away from me, to take the clothes 
off my back and the shoes off my feet, and 
you trying to get me out of their clutches 
and save my soul; and I've thought if ever 
I got ashore again, I'd ship in with you and 
sign the articles, and now I am going to do 
it." 

"Are you really determined to leave off 



400 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

drinking, or is it a mere impulse of the 
moment ? " 

" I never was more resolved to get drunk 
when I had come off a long voyage than I 
now am to keep sober." 

" You cannot do this in your own strength. 
I have known hundreds attempt it and fail ; 
you do not, cannot realize the struggle it will 
cost. Let us ask help of God." 

We knelt down together. When I had 
finished, I asked him to pray; he said he 
could not. 

"Then repeat the Lord's Prayer with rne ; 
we are together in this thing and must both 
have our hands on the rope." He did so, 
and added to it, " God, be merciful to me 
a sinner." 

"Your appetites and passions, Ben, have 
got you under their feet, and you must have 
help outside of yourself ; so long as you seek 
it where we have sought it together this morn- 
ing you will succeed." 

The next week he shipped for Australia. 
For five years I had seen him go from the 
house on different voyages, and he had always 
gone so intoxicated as to be barely able to sit 
in the wagon and unable to get aboard without 



MISCELLANEOUS 401 

help. The captain or mate would often say to 
the " runners " : — 

" What did you bring that drunken fellow 
here for ? I was to have good men from 
your place." And the invariable reply would 
be: — 

"Captain, he will be the best man in the 
ship when the rum's out of him. He's a bully 
man." 

This time he went aboard sober and fit for 
any duty, and came home as second mate of 
the ship. He was no longer Ben Bolt, but 
men who had been in the ship with him and 
whom he brought to the Home, called him Mr. 
Adams, William Adams. 

Note these two characters so strikingly dif- 
ferent in circumstances and in results. 

George L. ? spoken of in " A Wasted Life," 
after several struggles for victory over appetite, 
yielded and died by his own hand. William 
Adams conquered, continued steadfast through 
life, and accumulated property. George L. had 
youth on his side, a mother's affection and 
many kind friends to encourage him, and he 
made shipwreck. Adams at forty years of age 
was a confirmed drunkard, all his associates 
were in the practice of the same vice, all 



402 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

leagued together to drag him back, and with 
but one friend to take him by the hand and 
encourage him to a better course. George L. 
had a home, his flute, books, and steady em- 
ployment. He could attend lectures, find in- 
nocent amusement, and good society. Adams 
was in the narrow compass of a ship's fore- 
castle, where all the conversation among his 
shipmates was in respect to the debauchery 
they had practised while on shore and meant 
to practise again at the first opportunity. 
George L., if he had been so minded, could 
have turned down the next street and got 
clear of his evil companions, but Adams could 
not, and when the vessel arrived in a foreign 
port, and the crew had money given them and 
liberty to go ashore, the pressure was terrible. 
You may say, he could stay on board and let 
them go; so he did. But if you think this 
was an easy matter for a person of his previ- 
ous habits, all I can say is, you don't know 
what sailors are, and are entirely incapable of 
forming any conception of the strength of that 
instinct which leads a sailor to go with his 
shipmates either in good or evil. We talk 
about the strength of the college tie ; the 
college tie is a spider's web in the contrast. 



MISCELLANEOUS 403 

Why, I have frequently known the whole 
watch in a crew of men who had just come 
off a long voyage to insist on sleeping in the 
same room, three in a bed, and the rest on 
the floor, because they had been so long to- 
gether in the forecastle in the same watch ; 
but after three or four nights they would 
pair off and take rooms two together. 

All these trials, temptations, and discourage- 
ments Adams met and surmounted. I at- 
tribute the failure of George L. to the fact 
that he trusted in himself, and the success 
of Adams to the fact that he went out of 
himself at the very outset, went to God for 
aid. In his case it was the moral force sup- 
plementing the will that had become well- 
nigh powerless which decided a contest in 
which character, consideration, and happi- 
ness both here and hereafter, were at stake. 
All the talk at present is about forces of 
various kinds; but if a young man would 
have real force of character and wage a 
successful contest, let him seek for it where 
William Adams sought and found. 



MA'AM PRICE 

A notable woman was Ma'am Price who 
taught school in Portland, Maine ; and Polly, 
her daughter, was a spunky piece and was 
ready with an answer to anybody. The 
schoolroom was in Ma'am Price's own house 
that stood in Turkey Lane, so called from 

the following circumstance : Mr. , who 

lived in that locality, invited the Reverend 
Samuel Deane to dine with him and partake 
of a turkey. The parson coming according 
to appointment found a Cape Cod turkey on 
the table, — a boiled salt fish. Notwithstand- 
ing the town christened the lane Newburg 
Street, the name Turkey Lane clave to the 
spot more than forty years. 

When the British destroyed the town, 
Turkey Lane was directly in range of the 
enemy's fire ; and when Ma'am Price had 
removed her household stuff to a place of 
safety, Polly resolved to save her pig. A sea- 

404 



MISCELLANEOUS 405 

captain who had assisted her advised her to 
turn the animal out to shift for itself, as 
Mo watt had opened fire, and it was not 
worth while to risk life to save a pig that 
was not likely to be hit by a cannon-ball. 
Polly, however, fastened a string to the 
creature's leg and undertook to drive it a 
long mile to Bramhall's Hill. The pig was 
obstinate, Polly determined, the progress 
necessarily slow. Meanwhile shells were 
bursting and flinging the dirt on Polly. One 
junk of earth struck the stick from her hand, 
and red-hot cannon-balls were whirring around 
her, but Polly was determined to save the pig, 
and save it she did. 

Ma'am Price came to Portland from one of 
the West India Islands. She was a woman 
of culture, but very decided and strict in 
school discipline. If a boy refused to hold 
his head up, she fastened a fork under his 
chin. No trifling with her. 

Some years after this she was obliged to sus- 
pend her school on account of an alarm of small- 
pox. A number of her scholars, among whom 
were my mother and uncles, were inoculated 
with smallpox virus, put in a pesthouse, and 
Ma'am Price, in whose experience and judg- 



406 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

ment the parents reposed the greatest confi- 
dence, employed to take care of them. 

It was customary, before the discovery of 
Jenner, to inoculate with smallpox matter; 
but the patients being first put under a strict 
regime and properly and seasonably cared 
for, the disorder was not much more severe 
than varioloid. It was seldom that a patient 
died or was even pitted. 

These young persons had been long kept 
on water gruel and were convalescent, when 
Hugh McLellan, by aid of friends outside, 
procured two lobsters. The whole company 
were around the table about to partake, when 
Ma'am Price made her appearance, and for- 
bade them to take a mouthful, saying it 
would kill them. They were, however, re- 
solved to eat, live or die. When unable to 
prevent them, for the boys were large, she 
took out her box that was filled full of yel- 
low Scotch snuff, strewed it over the fish, and 
stirred it in with a spoon. Though provoked 
enough at the moment, they cherished no ill- 
will against her ; at least I think not, when 
I recollect the number of presents the boys 
and girls, whose parents were Ma'am Price's 
scholars, used to carry to Turkey Lane. 



MISCELLANEOUS 407 

The good lady's house was a great resort 
for captains of vessels, with whom her hus- 
band had been acquainted in the West Indies, 
and who brought her a great many presents, 
— fruit, shells, coral, eyestones, and vanilla 
beans. People who got anything in the eye 
would go to her to have an eyestone put in, 
and the old ladies went there for sweet-scented 
beans to put in their snuff-boxes. 

We were everlastingly teasing to carry some 
present to Ma'am Price, and we found our 
account in so doing. She would put the 
eyestones in a saucer and pour in vinegar, 
when they would crawl all over the saucer. 
She would show us old pictures, needlework, 
and beautiful shells, and tell us stories about 
the West Indies and the pirates. And always 
when we carried a present, she gave us tama- 
rind or guava jelly, or some West India fruit. 

There was one fellow who thought — though 
doubtless it was just his silly notion — that the 
boy who carried the most acceptable present 
received the largest share of sweetmeats. So 
one time when he was going to the good 
woman's with several other boys, and all he 
had to carry was a plate of doughnuts, while 
one of the others had a fifteen-pound turkey, 



408 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

he told that boy if he would present the 
doughnuts and let him present the turkey, 
he would give him two flounder hooks and 
a gray squirrel; thus they swapped. We 
all thought the other boy rather regretted 
it when going home, but he regretted it a 
good deal more about a week after when 
Ma'am Price came to call on their respective 
mothers and thanked his mother for "the 
nice plate of doughnuts " she sent her. 
Ma'am Price was very punctual and particu- 
lar in returning her acknowledgments, and 
she did it like Britannia stooping to conquer. 

I am now going to tell the most wonderful 
thing that ever happened to this excellent 
woman. One forenoon during recess she 
went into her little garden, picked a mess 
of beans in her apron, sat down in the school- 
room to shell them, and shelled out three 
diamonds. What a talk it did make ! Peo- 
ple came from all the towns round to hear 
the story and look at "the diamonds that 
grew in a bean pod." 

I hear some boy say, " That never could 
be ; diamonds couldn't grow in a bean pod." 
I have quoted that as town talk, and Ma'am 
Price and Polly always thought they grew 






MISCELLANEOUS 409 

there. I believe, moreover, that she shelled 
them out of a bean pod ; I shall stick to 
that. It's not the least use for you to tell 
me she didn't. Mrs. Commodore Preble saw 
her with her own eyes shell them out, and so 
did Mrs. Matthew Cobb who lived in the 
cottage on the eastern corner of High and 
Free streets. My mother said she did, and 
Mrs. James Deering said so too. Now, then, 
that's not all. The very day before the old 
lady died Miss Sarah Jewett said to her: 
" Ma'am Price, did you truly shell those dia- 
monds out of a bean pod? Hadn't the pod 
been opened, or was it solid together like 
the other pods?" 

" Bless you, Miss Jewett, how could I tell ? 
You know folks don't look at every bean or 
pea they shell, except there's one that won't 
open right. I was shelling away and looking 
at the children to see that they were all in 
their seats, when I felt something hard under 
my thumb and looked into my lap, and there 
were two little shining things among the 
beans, and another rolled out of the pod 
under my thumb when I took it up." 

Miss Jewett had one of the stones set in a 
ring that is now in the possession of William 



410 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

Gould of Windham. John Campbell, a rela- 
tive of Polly's, has another, and where the 
third is I do not know. 

Whenever the children carried Ma'am Price 
a present, she would take the diamonds out 
of a cotton in which they were kept, lay them 
in her lap, and let the children handle them; 
after which she would tell how she shelled 
them out of the bean pod, and how surprised 
she was. 

I suppose if I don't try to explain this 
mystery, I shall have forty letters from boys 
inquiring how those diamonds came there. 
Well, my father said that a vessel came to 
Portland from Brazil, on board of which were 
several kinds of precious stones. The mate 
of the vessel was paying attention to Polly, 
and he stole them out of the cargo and put 
them in the bean. He dared not give them 
to Polly nor tell her about it because he stole 
them ; but as they had only about a dozen 
bean vines, he knew she or her mother would 
find them after the vessel was gone, so he put 
them in the pod just as he was about to sail. 
The vessel was never heard from, and thus 
he never came back to claim Polly nor to 
tell her where the diamonds, which were not 



MISCELLANEOUS 411 

of any great value, came from, and Polly 
always thought they grew in the pod. This 
was my father's solution of the mystery which 
made considerable of a stir at the time. As 
he knew all the parties and circumstances 
thoroughly, it seems the most probable expla- 
nation ; for nobody ever doubted that Ma'am 
Price took them from the bean pod, and there 
were not many that believed they grew there, 
though some did and looked at it in the light 
of a special providence and provision for a 
worthy woman; the objections to which are 
that, though diamonds, they were rough dia- 
monds, not much more valuable than quartz, 
and that Providence provided abundantly for 
the good woman in the affections of her schol- 
ars, who never suffered her to lack any com- 
fort in her old age. 

If Ma'am Price was severe in her manage- 
ment of scholars, she was not more so than 
the parents themselves, as the following anec- 
dote will show. Captain Joseph McLellan had 
a thermometer, rather a rare thing in those 
days. His wife went to meeting one Sunday, 
leaving the boys, Joe and Stephen, at home. 
Stephen held the bulb of the thermometer 
to the fire to see the mercury rise, and by so 



412 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

doing broke it. They were well aware of the 
consequences. Joe told Stephen if he would 
give him fifty cents, he would tell his mother 
that he broke it and take the whipping, which 
he did. The next day the mother found out 
the true state of the case and whipped them 
both, Stephen for breaking the instrument, 
and Joe for telling a lie. These were the 
kind of women to handle unruly boys when 
the father was at sea. 



THE DISCONTENTED BROOK 

A DIALOGUE 

In a province of Old Spain respecting which 
the inhabitants were wont to say that God had 
given them a fertile soil, a salubrious climate, 
brave men, and beautiful women, but He had 
not given them a good government lest they 
should not be willing to die and go to heaven, 
there were two lakes separated by an inter- 
vening mountain. Each had an outlet in a 
brook ; and the two brooks, as they wound 
among the hills, ran near each other, so that 
they were enabled to converse together quite 
socially. They lay in the shadow of the hills 
among whose roots rose the river Guadal- 
quiver. The chain sloped by degrees to a 
fertile plain covered with vineyards and olive 
trees. Fields of wheat surrounded the scat- 
tered dwellings of the peasants and the tents 
of shepherds whose flocks fed upon the moun- 

413 



414 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

tains. The names of the brooks were Bono 
and Malo. 

One pleasant night at the close of a very 
sultry day they met to pass the evening to- 
gether ; so, getting into a little eddy beneath 
the shade of some large chestnut trees, where 
the moonbeams which glanced tremulously 
through the foliage enabled them to see each 
other's faces indistinctly, they thus spake in 
murmurs. 

Bono. "What a beautiful evening, neigh- 
bor Malo, after such a sultry day ! Yet I don't 
know as I ought to speak ill of the weather, 
for it has enabled me to do much good, to 
water many beautiful flowers and fields of 
grain that otherwise would have perished." 

Malo. "I don't know about that. Who 
thanked you for it ? I have been this whole 
day, — yes, for the matter of that, my whole 
life, — running first here, then there, squeezed 
in flumes, tangled in water-wheels, pounded 
in fulling mills, flung over precipices till my 
neck was well-nigh broken. Again, I am 
kept broiling in the sun, and if I steal for a 
moment into the shade, I cannot stay there. 
I have almost boiled to-day journeying among 
hot rocks and over burning sands. And what 



THE DISCONTENTED BBOOK 415 

thanks have I got for it? Do you know, 
neighbor Bono, the old peasant Alva?" 

Bono. " Has he a daughter Lenore ? Is 
his cottage shaded by two large cork trees ? 
And is there a field of saffron between his 
house and the mill?' , 

Malo. "Just so." 

Bono. "I have known him these many 
years. His daughter keeps a few sheep and 
goats on the mountain and often drives them 
to my waters." 

Malo. " Well, only think ! the old churl has 
been hoeing this morning among his saffron ; 
so at noon he comes to me and goes down on 
his hands and knees to drink. Then he says, 
' I'll bathe.' So he bathes and, without saying 
as much as i By your leave ' or i God is good ' 
or anything of the sort, just puts on his 
clothes and walks off. Yet I have watered 
his fields and those of his ancestors for a 
thousand years, have often kept them from 
starving, and not one of them ever gave me 
even a look of gratitude. But I am resolved 
to do so no more. I won't wear out my life 
for those who give me no thanks. I mean in 
the future to keep my waters to myself and to 
water no one but myself." 



416 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

Bono. u Well, neighbor Malo," replies Bono, 
with a murmur so sweet that the nightingale 
who was saying her evening prayers in the 
almond tree stopped to listen, " I cannot feel 
as you do, neither do I wish to. I have, in- 
deed, had some weary times, especially, as you 
say, to-day, and sometimes have been almost 
dried up. But I know what my duty is ; God 
made me to water the earth and the plants. 
It would be pleasant to receive gratitude, but 
if we cannot have that, there is one thing we 
can always have, — the happiness of feeling 
that we have done our duty." 

Malo. " Duty ! This is fine talking, but I 
heed it no more than the song of that night- 
ingale. What duty do I owe to that old 
peasant or any of his kin ? To the earth or 
the plants ? What good have they ever done 
me?" 

Bono. " But, neighbor Malo, the duty I 
speak of is not to them but to God. I have, 
as you very well know, turned the mills of 
Henrique these forty years, and also the full- 
ing mills of Gonzalez, his nephew. As I said 
before, this old Alva's daughter, who used you 
so scurvily, both waters and washes her sheep 
in my stream. Not one of these people ever 



THE DISCONTENTED BBOOK 417 

thanked me; yet I love very much to see 
their sheep fat, their lambs frisking on the 
hills, and their families thriving. I indeed 
enjoy their happiness as though it were my 
own/' 

Malo. "By this crouching spirit you invite 
insult and aggression." 

Bono. " But are we not as well off in this 
respect as our neighbors ? The earth bringeth 
not forth fruit for itself ; the ocean shares not 
in the profits of the voyage. Who thanks the 
patient ox for dragging the plough all his life ? 
The sheep gives her fleece to clothe them and 
then has her throat cut and her skin pulled 
over her ears, and not so much as ' Thank you ' 
or c By your leave ' to it all. You and I have 
not thanked God for this pleasant moonlight, 
this sweet shade, and these flowers that per- 
fume our banks. He, without any thanks, 
causes ' his sun to rise on the evil and on the 
good and sendeth rain on the just and on the 
unjust.' Surely then we, His instruments, 
ought not to complain who are so forgetful 
ourselves/' 

Malo. "You are a very noisy brook as 
everybody knows, but I am determined to 
take care of myself. I shall go home and 



418 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

stay at home. And you, who are as full of 
Scripture as a brook is of pebbles, ought to 
know that charity begins at home. ,, 

Bono. "True, but it does not stay there. 
I shall be sorry to lose your company; we 
have run together so long, but if you are 
resolved to benefit only yourself, I am just as 
firmly resolved to benefit others ; yes, the last 
drop — I will share even that with the faint 
and the thirsty." 

Thus Bono went on overflowing with kind- 
ness the whole world. The good brook ran 
among the vineyards, and the grapes hung in 
rich clusters ; it ran through the fields, and 
the grass turned to deeper green ; the trees 
said, "He waters us; let us shadow him." 
The great oaks and sycamores bent kindly 
over the brook, and their branches screened it 
from the heat of the sun. The shepherds 
often wanted wood, but they said : " Let us not 
cut down the trees that shade the brook, for it 
is a good brook. It turns our mills and waters 
our fields and flocks. God be thanked for 
the running water ! " Thus the brook that 
worked for everybody was loved and protected. 
It grew larger and ran in the Guadalquiver, 
and there helped to water larger fields and 



THE DISCONTENTED BROOK 419 

turn larger machinery; it ran to the ocean 
and foamed beneath the keel of mighty ships 
and was diffused over the whole universe of 
God. It sent up so many vapors to heaven 
that they returned in plentiful showers bring- 
ing back more than they carried. Thus the 
brook that watered, not expecting any thanks 
or profit, but because it was duty, was loved 
and blessed. 

But how fared it with Malo who had retired 
into himself to take care of himself and left 
his channel dry and dusty ? For a while he 
had more water than he knew what to do 
with. He was obliged to work night and day 
raising his banks to keep it in. He labored a 
great deal harder to keep the waters from 
breaking out and doing good to some one, 
watering some poor man's perishing crops, 
than he ever did before in watering and 
fertilizing a whole province. Meanwhile, in 
the plains below, the grass withered, the mill 
stopped, the flocks died, the shepherds cursed 
the brook, and some of them cursed God. 
But Malo said: "Let them curse. I'm for 
myself. I've water enough." But by and 
by a fire at which some shepherds were cook- 
ing their dinner got away from them, and the 



420 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

wind being high ran up the dry bed of the 
brook in the withered grass and dry leaves, 
and burnt up the forest on the sides of the 
hill that fed the pond and all the trees that 
shaded it. The sun, then pouring in with 
meridian heat, began to shrink the waters. 
There being little motion in them since they 
had ceased to run, they putrefied and the fish 
perished. Snakes, lizards, and all vile crea- 
tures came to live there. Instead of flowers 
and foliage, bullrushes, reeds, and the deadly 
aconite grew there. As the waters grew less 
and less fewer vapors went up from it and 
less rain came down. After a while it man- 
tled over with a green scum, and malaria 
began to rise from it. People began to die 
in the neighborhood ; malaria got among the 
soldiers in a garrison near by, and the doctors 
said, "It is the pond; it must be drained. " 
Then all the country round about and the sol- 
diers came together and drained it dry, and 
brought down earth and rocks from the 
mountain, and filled up the bed of the 
lake that there might be no more stagnant 
water. 

Thus it fell out to the brook that was deter- 
mined to benefit only itself. It lost all. It 



THE DISCONTENTED BROOK 421 

had both God and man to fight against. For 
if men are not always grateful, they are not 
often slack in repaying injuries. Let us fol- 
low the example of the industrious brook, and 
by it learn in blessing to be blessed. 



A COMPLETE LIST OF ELIJAH 
KELLOGG'S BOOKS 

[With the exception of " Norman Cline," all these books are 
published by Lee and Shepard, Boston. " Norman Cline " is pub- 
lished by the Congregational Sunday-school and Publishing Society, 
Boston.] 

Good Old Times; or Grandfather's Struggle for a 
Homestead. First published as a serial story in 
Our Young Folks in 1867 ; published in book form 
in 1878. 

Norman Cline. 1869. 

ELM ISLAND STORIES 

Lion Ben of Elm Island. 1869. 

Charlie Bell, the Waif of Elm Island. 1869. 

The Ark of Elm Island. 1869. 

The Boy Farmers of Elm Island. 1869. 

The Young Ship-Builders of Elm Island. 1870. 

The Hard-Scrabble of Elm Island. 1870. 

THE PLEASANT COVE SERIES 

Arthur Brown the Young Captain. 1870. 
The Young Deliverers of Pleasant Cove. 1871. 
The Cruise of the Casco. 1871. 
The Child of the Island Glen. 1872. 
John Godsoe's Legacy. 1873. 
The Fisher-Boys of Pleasant Cove. 1874. 

423 



424 ELIJAH KELLOGG 

THE WHISPERING PINE SERIES 

The Spark of Genius ; or the College Life of James 

Trafton. 1871. 
The Sophomores of Badcliffe ; or James Trafton and 

his Bosom Friends. 1872. 
The Whispering Pine ; or the Graduates of Badcliffe 

Hall. 1872. 
Winning his Spurs; or Henry Morton's First Trial. 

1872. 
The Turning of the Tide ; or Badcliffe Bich and his 

Friends. 1873. 
A Stout Heart; or The Student from over the Sea. 

1873. 

FOREST GLEN SERIES 

-Sowed by the Wind; or The Poor Boy's Fortune. 

1874. 
Wolf Bun ; or The Boys of the Wilderness. 1875. 
Brought to the Front; or The Young Defenders. 

1876. 
The Mission of Black Bine ; or On the Trail. 1876. 
Forest Glen ; or The Mohawk's Friendship. 1877. 
Burying the Hatchet; or the Young Brave of the 

Delawares. 1878. 

THE GOOD OLD TIMES SERIES 

(Including " Good Old Times," first mentioned above.) 

A Strong Arm and a Mother's Blessing. 1881. 

The Unseen Hand ; or James Benf ew and his Helpers. 

1882. 
The Live Oak Boys; or The Adventures of Bichard 

Constable Afloat and Ashore. 1883. 



♦DEC 19 1903 



